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“Betrayal”: MAGA Republicans rage over McCarthy deal — and threaten his speakership

Far-right House Republicans on Tuesday fumed over House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s, R-Calif., debt ceiling deal with President Joe Biden — and some are even threatening a motion to oust him as speaker.

House GOP leaders and the Biden administration reached a deal to suspend the debt ceiling until 2025 and cut spending while boosting the defense budget. The deal would impose work requirements for food stamps on adults between 50 and 54 by 2025 and claw back billions approved by Congress for the IRS and COVID relief.

The deal drew support from many in the Republican Party but members of the House Freedom Caucus, who impeded McCarthy’s ascension as speaker before he caved to many of their demands, are threatening to introduce a motion to put his speakership to another vote, which requires a motion from just one member to go to a vote under McCarthy’s speakership deal.

Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., called the deal “completely unacceptable.”

“Trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, for crumbs. For a pittance,” he said at a Freedom Caucus news conference.

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Bishop was the only member of the caucus to raise his hand when asked whether they would support a motion to oust McCarthy.

“I think it has to be done,” he told reporters, though he did not commit to filing a motion. “I’ll decide that in conjunction with others,” he said.

“I’m just fed up with the lies, I’m fed up with the lack of courage, the cowardice. And I intend to see to it that there is somebody who’s prepared to say what needs to be done,” he added.

“The Republican conference has been torn asunder,” Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, said at the conference, demanding that “not one Republican should vote for this deal.”

Roy later said in a radio interview that the MAGA wing of the GOP may target what he has described as a “power-sharing” agreement with McCarthy “if we can’t kill” the deal.

“We’re going to have to regroup and figure out the whole leadership arrangement again,” he said.

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Other members have groused as well.

Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., floated using the motion to vacate on a Freedom Caucus call on Monday, according to NBC News, describing it as the “elephant in the room.”

“Some people feel this is a complete miss,” an unnamed Republican lawmaker on the call told the outlet., “I’d say there are five or more who would be sympathetic to Buck’s position.”

Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., told Fox News that he could be open to removing the speaker.

“It depends on how McCarthy deals from here on out,” he said.

The deal will need Democratic votes to pass but it is unclear how many Republicans will defect. Reps. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., threatened to target McCarthy’s leadership depending on how the vote goes.

“If this bill passes with a majority of Democrats voting in favor of it, then I’m sorry, that’s the end of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership,” Boebert said on Steve Bannon’s podcast. “That is a bad, bad look to pass a bill of this magnitude without the support of the majority and if it’s Democrats.”

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Gaetz told Newsmax that he would support a motion to vacate if “a majority of Republicans” oppose the bill and McCarthy has to “use Democrats to pass it.”

“That would immediately be a black letter violation of the deal we had with McCarthy to allow his ascent to the Speakership, and it would likely trigger an immediate motion to vacate,” he said.

“I think Speaker McCarthy knows that,” he added. “That’s why he’s working hard to make sure that he gets, you know, 120, 150, 160 votes. And that’s why those of us who are not supportive of the bill are trying to point out that many of the changes are cosmetic in nature.”

The bill cleared a key hurdle on Tuesday as the House Rules Committee voted to advance the bill. Roy and Norman voted against the bill but fellow right-winger Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., served as the pivotal vote to advance the deal.

McCarthy has shrugged off the dissent and repeatedly defended the deal.

“The largest cut in the history of Congress, the biggest ability to pull money back, we’ve got work requirements. … Tell me again what did the Democrats put in it? I couldn’t remember what that was,” he told reporters, adding that “it is an easy vote for Republicans.”

Democrats have not been happy about the deal but House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., vowed to deliver Democratic votes to pass the deal if at least 150 House Republicans vote for the bill.

“House Democrats will make sure that the country does not default,” he told reporters at a news conference.

But progressives have criticized the deal over new work requirements, spending cuts, and a provision to streamline the approval process for some energy projects, including the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which was pushed by some Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.

“The process … sets an extremely dangerous precedent: Republicans can hold the economy hostage,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal told reporters on Tuesday. “They can force through their extremist policy priorities that have absolutely nothing to do with cutting spending or cutting the deficit.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said the deal “rewards the hostage-taking that the Republicans have gotten so damn good at.”

“I’m disappointed that our president was put in this position. The Republicans are demanding changes that they cannot get through the ordinary democratic process because they’re not supported by the American people,” she said.

“The minute we get the votes, we need to eliminate the debt ceiling,” she added. “For good.”

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about the debt deal

Democrats make a deal to avoid a debt ceiling disaster — but will they learn the real lesson?

By the time you read this, it’s possible that the debt ceiling saga will finally be over. Senate leaders have said they have the votes to pass it and as of this writing, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is set to call for a vote on the package immediately — and unless he is completely inept (which is very possible), that means he knows he has the votes. Of course, anything can happen with this volatility slim GOP House majority, as we learned during the epic speaker vote back in January. They like the drama and we may get some yet. But at this moment it appears that the deal struck by McCarthy and President Biden over the weekend is likely going to pass on a bipartisan basis over the objections of some on both the left and right, avoiding a default and any ensuing economic catastrophe.

This agreement has left a sour taste in the mouths of progressives who were led to believe that the Democratic leadership in Congress and the White House had learned their lesson from past debt ceiling showdowns and were not going to engage this time. There is intense frustration in the Democratic ranks over the GOP’s repeated hostage-taking with demands for cuts to vital programs while they behave like responsible leaders whenever a Republican is in the White House and thus engage in budget negotiations in good faith.

This time, Republicans got cuts to programs that help people but a lot of suffering was left on the cutting room floor so they feel cheated. Democrats got a reprieve from the next hostage crisis until after the election and the world was spared a default on the debt. That’s really about it. Nonetheless, there isn’t any question that the Democrats will provide enough votes to get it over the line (unless there is a mass defection among Republicans.) They aren’t terrorists and the default sword of Damocles still hovers.

The Freedom Caucus, on the other hand, is having a temper tantrum and whining about not having time to read a hundred-page bill. Or, at least some members are.

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McCarthy ally Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., has been promoting the deal as a huge win and her cohort Matt Gaetz, R-Fl., has been playing the role of savvy insider, moving the goalposts by saying that “if McCarthy tries to pass the debt ceiling bill with Democrats and a minority of Republicans, he would violate his deal with the Freedom Caucus when he became Speaker and would trigger an immediate Motion to Vacate him from the Speaker’s chair.” (It flows from the longstanding “Hastert Rule” which holds that a Republican speaker doesn’t put any vote on the floor that won’t pass without a majority of Republicans, even if the bill would pass the House without it. But triggering an immediate Motion to Vacate is a new twist.) Nobody’s ever heard of that “deal” before but it does help McCarthy if the rest of the Freedom Caucus goes along with the pretense that this was ever at issue. McCarthy still faces the distinct possibility of losing the gavel if just one of his members raises that motion and four decide to vote against him because Gaetz’s feint notwithstanding, there are a number of caucus members, mostly among those who were holdouts against McCarthy in that 15 rounds of voting, who are not happy with the deal.

The ringleader of the opposition seems to be Texas Rep. Chip Roy who said it’s a “betrayal of the power sharing arrangement that we put in place” and contends that if they can’t stop the bill, “then we’re going to have to then regroup and figure out the whole leadership arrangement again.” I think we know what he’s referring to there. According to CNN, Roy claimed that McCarthy had made yet another backroom deal that nobody knew about which would have required a unanimous GOP vote in the Rules Committee to vote out a piece of legislation so it could go to the floor for a vote. That demand was put to bed on Tuesday when Rules Committee and Freedom Caucus member Thomas Massie, R-Ky., voted to allow the bill to go to the floor. Now the action is all in the caucus as a whole.

But it appears that there are still several House members who are at least open to the idea of removing the Speaker over this agreement:

These people are being helped by some of the presidential candidates, none of whom were very interested during the negotiations but who are suddenly against the deal.

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Mike Pence gave a typically mealy-mouthed response: “Congress’ debt limit deal doesn’t just kick the can down the road, it uses Washington smoke and mirror games to make small reforms while weakening our military at a time of increasing threats from foreign adversaries.” (The military budget wasn’t touched, but whatever.) Ron DeSantis finally weighed in telling “Fox and Friends” that “our country was careening toward bankruptcy” before the deal was struck “and after this deal, our country will still be careening toward bankruptcy.” Nikki Haley, meanwhile, pointed out that DeSantis had voted to raise the debt ceiling in 2018 and Trump signed it into law, saying that “the best way to fix Washington’s spending addiction is to elect people who have not been part of the problem.”

The only person we haven’t heard from as I write this late on Tuesday night is former president Donald J. Trump, which is odd since he has said numerous times that the GOP House should let the country default if they don’t get everything they want and “the kitchen sink,” too. You’d think he’d be out there slamming the deal, wouldn’t you? It’s unusually savvy of him to be this cautious but perhaps all the people and positions he’s endorsed who have lost have finally convinced him that his popularity doesn’t extend to anyone but himself. He could not care less about the substance so why waste the effort?

We won’t ever know what might have happened had President Biden stuck to his original stance that there would be no negotiation over the debt ceiling but considering how relatively docile the Republicans have been with the deal, it seems pretty clear that despite their caterwauling they weren’t as gung-ho to go over the cliff as they pretended to be. There’s a lesson in that somewhere but whatever it is I’m going to assume no one will remember it the next time the Republicans take the country hostage again. And there will be a next time.

If this deal accomplished anything, it was to guarantee that if Joe Biden wins re-election but the Republicans hold the House, we’ll be right back here in 2025 playing the same stupid game. If the Democrats don’t abolish this monstrous terrorist weapon the next time they get the trifecta, it will be unforgivable. 

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about Republicans and the debt ceiling

Discovered in collections, many new species are already gone

It could have been a scene from Jurassic Park: ten golden lumps of hardened resin, each encasing insects. But these weren’t from the age of the dinosaurs; these younger resins were formed in eastern Africa within the last few hundreds or thousands of years. Still, they offered a glimpse into a lost past: the dry evergreen forests of coastal Tanzania.

An international team of scientists recently took a close look at the lumps, which had been first collected more than a century ago by resin traders and then housed at the Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany. Many of the insects encased within them were stingless bees, tropical pollinators that can get stuck in the sticky substance while gathering it to construct nests. Three of the species still live in Africa, but two had such a unique combination of features that last year, the scientists reported them to be new to science: Axestotrigona kitingae and Hypotrigona kleineri.

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Species discoveries can be joyous occasions, but not in this case. Eastern African forests have nearly disappeared in the past century, and neither bee species has been spotted in surveys conducted in the area since the 1990s, noted coauthor and entomologist Michael Engel, who recently moved from a position at the University of Kansas to the American Museum of Natural History. Given that these social bees are usually abundant, it’s unlikely that the people looking for insects had simply missed them. Sometime in the last 50 to 60 years, Engel suspects, the bees vanished along with their habitat.

“It seems trivial on a planet with millions of species to sit back and go, ‘Okay, well, you documented two stingless bees that were lost,'” Engel said. “But it’s really far more troubling than that,” he added, because scientists increasingly recognize that extinction is “a very common phenomenon.”

Scientists increasingly recognize that extinction is “a very common phenomenon.”

extinct by the time they’re discovered. Scientists have identified new species of bats, birds, beetles, fish, frogs, snails, orchids, lichen, marsh plants, and wildflowers by studying old museum specimens, only to find that they are at risk of vanishing or may not exist in the wild anymore. Such discoveries illustrate how little is still known about Earth’s biodiversity and the mounting scale of extinctions. They also hint at the silent extinctions among species that haven’t yet been described — what scientists call dark extinctions.

It’s critical to identify undescribed species and the threats they face, said Martin Cheek, a botanist at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in the United Kingdom, because if experts and policymakers don’t know an endangered species exists, they can’t take action to preserve it. With no way to count how many undescribed species are going extinct, researchers also risk underestimating the scale of human-caused extinctions — including the loss of ecologically vital species like pollinators. And if species go extinct unnoticed, scientists also miss the chance to capture the complete richness of life on Earth for future generations. “I think we want to have a full assessment of humans’ impact on nature,” said theoretical ecologist Ryan Chisholm of the National University of Singapore. “And to do that, we need to take account of these dark extinctions as well as the extinctions that we know about.”

They also hint at the silent extinctions among species that haven’t yet been described — what scientists call dark extinctions.

Many scientists agree that humans have pushed extinctions higher than the natural rate of species turnover, but nobody knows the actual toll. In the tens of millions of years before humans came along, scientists estimate that for every 10,000 species, between 0.1 and 2 went extinct each century. (Even these rates are uncertain because many species didn’t leave behind fossils.) Some studies suggest that extinction rates picked up at least in the past 10,000 years as humans expanded across the globe, hunting large mammals along the way.

Islands were particularly hard hit, for instance in the Pacific, where Polynesian settlers introduced pigs and rats that wiped out native species. Then, starting in the 16th century, contact with European explorers caused additional extinctions in many places by intensifying habitat loss and the introduction of invasive species — issues that often continued in places that became colonies. But again, scientists have a poor record of biodiversity during this time; some species’ extinctions were only recognized much later, most famously the dodo, which had disappeared by 1700 after 200 years of Europeans hunting and then settling on the island in the Indian Ocean island it inhabited.

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Key drivers of extinction, such as industrialization, have ramped up ever since. For the past century, some scientists have estimated an average of 200 extinctions per 10,000 species — levels so high that they believe they portend a mass extinction, a term reserved for geological events of the scale of the ordeal that annihilated the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. Yet some scientists, including the authors of those estimates, caution that even these numbers are conservative. The figures are based on the Red List compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, a bookkeeper of species and their conservation statuses. As several experts have noted, the organization is slow to declare species extinct, wary that if the classification is wrong, they may cause threatened species to lose protections.

The Red List doesn’t include undescribed species, which some estimate could account for roughly 86 percent of the possibly 8.7 million species on Earth. That’s partly due to the sheer numbers of the largest species groups like invertebrates, plants, and fungi, especially in the little-explored regions around the tropics. It’s also because there are increasingly fewer experts to describe them due to a widespread lack of funding and training, noted conservation ecologist Natalia Ocampo-Peñuela of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Ocampo-Peñuela told Undark that she has no doubt that many species are going extinct without anyone noticing. “I think it is a phenomenon that will continue to happen and that it maybe has happened a lot more than we realize,” she said.

Studies of animal and plant specimens in museum and herbaria collections can uncover some of these dark extinctions. This can happen when scientists take a closer look at or conduct DNA analysis on specimens believed to represent known species and realize that these have actually been mislabeled, and instead represent new species that haven’t been seen in the wild in decades. Such a case unfolded recently for the ichthyologist Wilson Costa of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who has long studied the diversity of killifish inhabiting southeastern Brazil’s Atlantic Forest. These fish live in shady, tea-colored acidic pools that form during the rainy season and lay eggs that survive through the dry period. These fragile conditions make these species extremely vulnerable to changes in water supply or deforestation, Costa wrote to Undark via email.

“The product of millions of years of evolution stupidly interrupted.”

In 2019, Costa discovered that certain fish specimens collected in the 1980s weren’t members of Leptopanchax splendens, as previously believed, but actually represented a new species, which he called Leptopanchax sanguineus. With a few differences, both fish sport alternating red and metallic blue stripes on their flanks. While Leptopanchax splendens is critically endangered, Leptopanchax sanguineus hasn’t been spotted at all since its last collection in 1987. Pools no longer form where it was first found, probably because a nearby breeding facility for ornamental fish has diverted the water supply, said Costa, who has already witnessed the extinctions of several killifish species. “In the case discussed here, it was particularly sad because it is a species with unique characteristics and unusual beauty,” he added, “the product of millions of years of evolution stupidly interrupted.”

Similar discoveries have come from undescribed specimens, which exist in troves for diverse and poorly-studied groups of species, such as the land snails that have evolved across Pacific Islands. The mollusk specialist Alan Solem estimated in 1990 that, of roughly 200 Hawaiian species of one snail family, the Endodontidae, in Honolulu’s Bishop Museum, fewer than 40 had been described. All but a few are now likely extinct, said University of Hawaii biologist Robert Cowie, perhaps because invasive ants feasted off the snails’ eggs, which this snail family carries in a cavity underneath their shells. Meanwhile, Cheek said he’s publishing more and more new plant species from undescribed herbaria specimens that are likely already extinct in the wild.

Sometimes, though, it’s hard to identify species based on individual specimens, noted botanist Naomi Fraga, who directs conservation programs at the California Botanic Garden. And describing new species is not often a research priority. Studies that report new species aren’t often cited by other scientists, and they typically also don’t help towards pulling in new funding, both of which are key to academic success, Cheek said. One 2012 study concluded it takes an average of 21 years for a collected species to be formally described in the scientific literature. The authors added that if these difficulties — and the general dearth of taxonomists — persist, experts will continue to find extinct species in museum collections, “just as astronomers observe stars that vanished thousands of years ago.”

Museum records may only represent a fraction of undescribed species, causing some scientists to worry that many species could disappear unnoticed. For some groups, like snails, this is less likely, as extinct species may leave behind a shell that serves as a record of their existence even if collectors weren’t around to collect live specimens, noted Cowie. For instance, this allowed scientists to identify nine new and already-extinct species of helicinid land snails by combing the Gambier Islands in the Pacific for empty shells and combining these with specimens that already existed in museums. However, Cowie worries about the many invertebrates such as insects and spiders that won’t leave behind long-lasting physical remains. “What I worry about is that all this squishy biodiversity will just vanish without leaving a trace, and we’ll never know existed,” Cowie said.

Even some species that are found while they are still alive are already on the brink. In fact, research suggests that it’s precisely the newly described species that tend to have the highest risk of going extinct. Many new species are only now being discovered because they’re rare, isolated, or both — factors that also make them easier to wipe out, said Fraga. In 2018 in Guinea, for instance, botanist Denise Molmou of the National Herbarium of Guinea in Conakry discovered a new plant species which, like many of its relatives, appeared to inhabit a single waterfall, enveloping rocks amid the bubbly, air-rich water. Molmou was the last known person to see it alive.

Just before her team published their findings in the Kew Bulletin last year, Cheek looked at the waterfall’s location on Google Earth. A reservoir, created by a hydroelectric dam downriver, had flooded the waterfall, surely drowning any plants there, Cheek said. “Had we not got in there, and Denise had not gotten that specimen, we would not know that that species existed,” he added. “I felt sick, I felt, you know, it’s hopeless, like what’s the point?” Even if the team had known at the point of discovery that the dam was going to wipe it out, Cheek said, “it’d be quite difficult to do anything about it.”

While extinction is likely for many of these cases, it’s often hard to prove. The IUCN requires targeted searches to declare an extinction — something that Costa is still planning on doing for the killifish, four years after its discovery. But these surveys cost money, and aren’t always possible.

Meanwhile, some scientists have turned to computational techniques to estimate the scale of dark extinction, by extrapolating rates of species discovery and extinctions among known species. When Chisholm’s group applied this method to the estimated 195 species of birds in Singapore, they estimated that 9.6 undescribed species have vanished from the area in the past 200 years, in addition to the disappearance of 58 known species. For butterflies in Singapore, accounting for dark extinction roughly doubled the extinction toll of 132 known species.

Using similar approaches, a different research team estimated that the proportion of dark extinctions could account for up to just over a half of all extinctions, depending on the region and species group. Of course, “the main challenge in estimating dark extinction is that it is exactly that: an estimate. We can never be sure,” noted Quentin Cronk, a botanist of the University of British Columbia who has produced similar estimates.

If these difficulties persist, experts will continue to find extinct species in museum collections, “just as astronomers observe stars that vanished thousands of years ago.”

Considering the current trends, some scientists doubt whether it’s even possible to name all species before they go extinct. To Cowie, who expressed little optimism extinctions will abate, the priority should be collecting species, especially invertebrates, from the wild so there will at least be museum specimens to mark their existence. “It’s sort of doing a disservice to our descendants if we let everything just vanish such that 200 years from now, nobody would know the biodiversity — the true biodiversity — that had evolved in the Amazon, for instance,” he said. “I want to know what lives and lived on this Earth,” he continued. “And it’s not just dinosaurs and mammoths and what have you; it’s all these little things that make the world go round.”

Other scientists, like Fraga, find hope in the fact that the presumption of extinction is just that — a presumption. As long as there’s still habitat, there’s a slim chance that species deemed extinct can be rediscovered and returned to healthy populations. In 2021, Japanese scientists stumbled across the fairy lantern Thismia kobensis, a fleshy orange flower only known from a single specimen collected in 1992. Now efforts are underway to protect its location and cultivate specimens for conservation.

Fraga is tracking down reported sightings of a monkeyflower species she identified in herbaria specimens: Erythranthe marmorata, which has bright yellow petals with red spots. Ultimately, she said, species are not just names. They are participants of ecological networks, upon which many other species, including humans, depend.

“We don’t want museum specimens,” she said. “We want to have thriving ecosystems and habitats. And in order to do that, we need to make sure that these species are thriving in, you know, populations in their ecological context, not just living in a museum.”

Katarina Zimmer is a science journalist. Her work has been published in The Scientist, National Geographic, Grist, Outside Magazine, and more.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

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The making of a martyr: Stiff Jan. 6 sentence makes Stewart Rhodes a “rockstar,” says ex-Oath Keeper

Last Thursday, Stuart Rhodes, the founder of the right-wing paramilitary “militia” group the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison by a federal court for the crime of seditious conspiracy in connection to the Jan. 6 coup attempt. It is the most serious punishment yet for those who have been convicted of participating in Trump’s coup attempt.

Given the law, Rhodes was lucky to receive an 18-year sentence – that he will appeal. Rhodes is unrepentant and believes that he is a “victim” of a “conspiracy.” He considers himself a “patriot,” and ultimately a “hero” in a larger struggle to “save” democracy. During his sentencing, Rhodes told the judge, “I’m a political prisoner and like President Trump, my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country.” 

Stuart Rhodes is much more than one person, an infamous name who rose to public attention because of Jan. 6 and who will quickly be forgotten by the news media and general public, both of whom possess a very limited attention span. In reality, people like Stuart Rhodes represent the larger existential threat to American democracy posed by the Republican fascists, the MAGAites, and their collective forces.

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Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes sentenced to 18 years for seditious conspiracy

Jason Van Tatenhove possesses a unique understanding of Stuart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers “militia”, and the larger right-wing militant antigovernment movement. For several years beginning in 2014, Tatenhove served as the national media director for the Oath Keepers. In that role, he became a close friend and confidante of Rhodes. Tatenhove himself rose to national prominence because of his courageous decision to publicly testify before the House Select Committee on Jan. 6.

Tatenhove documented his experiences with the Oath Keepers in his book “The Perils of Extremism: How I Left the Oath Keepers and Why We Should be Concerned about a Future Civil War“. He is currently finishing his fourth title; a cyberpunk meets western speculative fiction novel that explores the concepts related to a shattered nation after a neofascist takeover and second civil war. 

In this conversation, Tatenhove explains what he learned about Rhodes, the human being and leader, and how the latter became such an influential figure among the right-wing militant extremist movement. Tatenhove also reflects on his friendship with Stuart Rhodes – who lived with Tatenhove for almost a year – and how Rhodes followed a typical path of radicalization, which included frustrations and life disappointments that eventually brought him to Jan. 6. Tatenhove warns that contrary to being in any way deterred or broken, Stuart Rhodes is now a “rockstar” among right-wing extremists and “the movement”.

As they have already signaled, if Trump or DeSantis or another such neofascist takes power Rhodes and the other Jan. 6 terrorists will likely be pardoned. Tatenhove sounds the alarm that if such a nightmare scenario were to occur, Rhodes and the other senior leaders of the Oath Keepers and the militant right will hold positions of great power that they will use as enforcers for the new regime against their shared “enemies” meaning Democrats, liberals, progressives, non-whites, Muslims, the LGBTQ community and anyone else who refuses to submit.

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This is the first interview that Tatenhove has given since Stuart Rhodes was sentenced to prison last week. It has been lightly edited for clarity. 

What was your immediate reaction to seeing Stewart Rhodes convicted of seditious conspiracy? That is a high crime, and no one has been convicted of seditious conspiracy – basically trying to overthrow the government — for decades. 

Right now, we’re at a place in our country where we need to do the first aid and triage. And that is holding the leadership, specifically, accountable under the law. We need to show that if you try to dismantle the wheels of democracy, there will be severe repercussions. Before Jan. 6, the leadership had not been held accountable for their crimes, at least within the militia community. It has been the pawns who pay the price. There is also the critical question of what comes next. Consider someone like Stewart Rhodes. What happens when they are put into a federal prison and are going to do significant time when they were already building their own gang-like organizations, arming up, and taking action? Prison is a kind of university for them. What influence will Rhodes be able to wield behind bars? Will he continue with his plotting against democracy? DeSantis and Trump have said they would pardon many, if not all, of the Jan. 6 terrorists.  

Tell me about the real Stewart Rhodes. Who is he beyond a name and image that people will see on TV and read about? Who does Stewart Rhodes imagine himself being in the story?

Rhodes’ story is a common one in terms of radicalization. Stewart is a man who is lost; things have not gone the way he had planned for his life. He had been a staffer for Ron Paul up on Capitol Hill. He served as a paratrooper in the Army and was injured during training. Stewart wanted to be a hero character in his own mind. He was also an attorney, and then he got disbarred. Rhodes is very smart, and he and I shared a curiosity for what I would describe as “social engineering.” This means trying to manifest your ideas into reality. That type of intelligence and thinking led to his creation of the Oath Keepers. The origin of the Oath Keepers is online on an old discussion board called The Mental Militia. In the end, Rhodes can be explained as a brilliant guy with charisma studying different propaganda techniques and ways to influence people. Rhodes took that experience and then used it to create the Oath Keepers and engage in other types of social engineering. 

Stewart Rhodes lived with you for almost a year. You worked closely with him in the Oath Keepers. What is his personal energy like? What is it like when he enters a room? Describe his personality.

“Stewart was on some Joseph Campbell hero’s journey, but it got twisted and distorted horribly along the way.”

He’s intense. He’s also a person who is a voracious reader. He reads multiple books at the same time. Stewart is also very learned when it comes to American history. He knows a great deal about the law, given that he went to Yale law school. Stewart also has self-doubt and self-image, and self-esteem issues. He is not the most physically attractive person either. Stewart is a great conversationalist and can use that skill to get inside people’s heads. His ability to talk was a way of compensating for his insecurities about his appearance.  

Stewart Rhodes sees himself as a hero. How did that lead to him and the Oath Keepers being involved in the Jan. 6 coup attempt?

Again, that goes back to how his life did not go as planned. Many of us look for scapegoats and make excuses before we accept that we are primarily responsible for our life choices and circumstances. For Rhodes, the federal government was something he could blame for his troubles. That resonated with many people from rural America who flocked to him—in that part of the country and subculture, Waco and Ruby Ridge significantly impacted how people think about the federal government.  

Is Stewart Rhodes a charismatic leader? Why would people follow him? 

He’s very charismatic, especially in conversation and the written word. He can touch on emotions, which is the key to his charisma and leadership style. As I said previously, he’s good at reading people and then spinning his message to their needs. His appeal is primarily intellectual. Stewart is also skilled at optics. For example, he would be on social media and the internet, presenting himself as some tough guy and warrior ready to fight in the streets. Of course, he didn’t do any of that. In his mind, Stewart is a hero — at least in the beginning. In the end, Stewart was trying to hold on to the trappings of what little power he had amassed with the Oath Keepers and right-wing militia movement and then project it forward. Stewart saw a great opportunity in Trump and what happened around January 6 and the coup attempt.

It’s one thing to ride in Vietnam-era Hueys and run around in the woods wearing camo and shooting guns versus traveling to Washington D.C. and being armed for war as part of a coup attempt where you will serve as some “militia” or “quick reaction force” for Donald Trump when he declares martial law. I know some folks like that, and they wouldn’t go through with the real deal. Was there a moment where Rhodes said, “I’m in over my head!” That he is in too deep, and things have gotten way too serious. You know the man, what do you believe he was thinking?

I don’t think that Stewart would get to a point where he would think he was in too deep. The people who can pull off fantastical things are the ones who are crazy enough to try it. He was undoubtedly one of those people. Just that power of belief weeds out 90 percent of people. Stewart Rhodes is a big dreamer, and of course, his dreams did not align with what he was preaching and then what he did trying to tear down democracy.

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Stewart still believes the same things about tearing down democracy right now. The letter Stewart sent to the judge asking for leniency said that he did not believe he did anything wrong. Moreover, he thinks he should be granted time served and commended for starting the organization the Oath Keepers. A certain part of this can be explained by how Stewart lived in his own head, separate from reality. Unfortunately, Stewart’s fantasies became real and ended up being to the extreme detriment of the American people.   

What were Stewart Rhodes’ dreams? What’s his vision?

He was trying to create a situation where a character like Trump would come along, and he would be able to become this paramilitary, anti-hero, or even outright hero-type character. His primary motivation was not money. That was not what Stewart was good at as compared to the other leaders in the right-wing extremist community. Stewart was on some Joseph Campbell hero’s journey, but it got twisted and distorted horribly along the way.

What did Stewart Rhodes like to read? What were the books and other things did he draw upon to create his own personal narrative and make sense of the world?

A lot of it was historical and centered on the Revolutionary War era. He also talked a lot about fiction and other literature, conspiracy theories, survivalist stuff, and the like that are popular among the right-wing extremist and militia community. These are updated versions of the Turner Diaries mostly.

What makes Stewert Rhodes happy? What were you guys doing when you weren’t discussing or engaging in political work?

We would go to the bar every now and then and shoot pool or play shuffleboard. We would talk, lots of good conversations. Stewart was an artist. He was a fantastic artist who did sculpture work in Vegas out of Styrofoam for shows. His work just blew me away. We both are artists. While Stewart was living with me, I encouraged him to do yoga and meditate. I assume he isn’t doing that type of spiritual work anymore. 

We are more than our worst day, as they say. But in that vein, does Rhodes have any real sense of what he has done and its consequences? 

I don’t think that Stewart fully realized what happened and what this would mean for the rest of his life. Stewart’s worst day will be when he’s got no one to talk to, and he’s sitting in a cell by himself for years and years on end. He may finally realize what he has done when reality falls in on him. I don’t know if Stewart Rhodes can be reformed. Imagine if Stewart Rhodes gets schooled and smartened up by someone from the Aryan Brotherhood. Stewart is charismatic and highly intelligent and almost played a crucial role in bringing down our democracy. Now he is in the federal prison system surrounded by people with far fewer scruples and the real demonstrated ability to reach out and kill federal judges, for example. In the worst-case scenario, Stewart Rhodes and the other Jan. 6 terrorists in jail can become a much more dangerous movement. They go from being overweight guys running around in the woods cosplaying to being hardened criminals who have been through our federal prisons’ criminal university system. I am trying to sort these scenarios out in my new speculative fiction novel. 

Now that Stewart Rhodes has been convicted of high crimes and is going to federal prison, what has that done to his standing among the militias and other right-wing extremists? 

“If Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis gets elected, Stewart Rhodes will return.”

Stewart is already a martyr. He is a star right now.

In the spirit of comic books and superheroes and supervillains, what is his origin story?

Stewart Rhodes grew up poor. I believe the stories he told me about how his family was basically migrant farmers. He met his wife at a very young age. It was his wife who got him through Yale Law. Stewart found a certain amount of success working for Ron Paul. He had a lot of things going for him, but nothing ever quite worked out. Stewart was always on the verge of success and mostly just got in his own way. Stewart felt like he deserved more and wasn’t able to manifest it. His law career never took off; his military career never took off; his marriage ended poorly. The engine sparked, but it never turned over.

Stewart Rhodes has been tried and sentenced. He is locked up in a cell right now. What is he thinking about? 

He’s planning for every possibility. He’s thinking of what happens if he’s cut off and isolated. He’s planning about if he has access to people and can rebuild things on the outside. He’s thinking about navigating the criminal political environment as best he can to survive and thrive there. Stewart Rhodes is playing everything out in his head for every possibility and trying to devise contingency plans.

What is Rhodes an example of in this moment of democracy crisis with Trump, DeSantis, and the other neofascists rising in power and threatening to retake control of the country?

Stewart Rhodes is an example of bad behavior being rewarded. If Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis gets elected, Stewart Rhodes will return. He will make a triumphant speech and likely be appointed to a government position. If Trump or DeSantis wins, Stewart will rebuild the Oath Keepers and take the organization and right-wing militia movement even further than he ever could have because he will now have the legitimacy to do so. It’s a lot like Hitler after he got released from prison. He wrote his manifesto and was ready to put his political plans into action fully. That will mean violence. 

Where are we in terms of justice for the crimes of January 6 — and where should we be? As I see it, if there was actual justice in America, Donald Trump, the Republican coup plotters in Congress, and the other leaders and participants in the Jan. 6 plot and the larger fascist anti-democracy movement would be in prison right now.  

We live in a world where that’s just not the case. I think the best we can hope for is staving off this radical extremist right-wing movement for another few years as we try to regroup. But I don’t know what real justice looks like or if it is even attainable right now in this country.

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about this the right’s political violence

The FDA finally approved Elon Musk’s Neuralink chip for human trials. Is it safe?

Since its founding in 2016, Elon Musk’s neurotechnology company Neuralink has had the ambitious mission to build a next-generation brain implant with at least 100 times more brain connections than devices currently approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

The company has now reached a significant milestone, having received FDA approval to begin human trials. So what were the issues keeping the technology in the pre-clinical trial phase for as long as it was? And have these concerns been addressed?

What is Neuralink?

Neuralink is making a Class III medical device known as a brain-computer interface (BCI). The device connects the brain to an external computer via a Bluetooth signal, enabling continuous communication back and forth.

The device itself is a coin-sized unit called a Link. It’s implanted within a small disk-shaped cutout in the skull using a precision surgical robot. The robot splices a thousand tiny threads from the Link to certain neurons in the brain. Each thread is about a quarter the diameter of a human hair.

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Potential benefits

If Neuralink’s BCI can be made to work safely on humans, I believe the potential benefits would make the effort worthwhile.

The company says the device could enable precise control of prosthetic limbs, giving amputees natural motor skills. It could revolutionise treatment for conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and spinal cord injuries. It also shows some promise for potential treatment of obesity, autism, depression, schizophrenia and tinnitus.

Several other neurotechnology companies and researchers have already developed BCI technologies that have helped people with limited mobility regain movement and complete daily tasks.

BCIs have also been used to help older people train their motor and cognitive abilities to moderate the worst effects of ageing.

The long road to FDA approval for human trials

In February 2021, Musk said Neuralink was working with the FDA to secure permission to start initial human trials later that year. But human trials didn’t commence in 2021.

Then, in March 2022, Neuralink made a further application to the FDA to establish its readiness to begin humans trials.

One year and three months later, on May 25 2023, Neuralink finally received FDA approval for its first human clinical trial. Given how hard Neuralink has pushed for permission to begin, we can assume it will begin very soon.

The approval has come less than six months after the US Office of the Inspector General launched an investigation into Neuralink over potential animal welfare violations.

What were the FDA’s concerns?

The FDA had quite a list of issues that needed to be resolved before human trials could commence, as was reported in a Reuters investigation, which claimed to have spoken to several Neuralink sources.

Most of these concerns called for Neuralink to perform thorough and repeated testing and data collection over an extended period. This was likely a deciding factor in why the approval process to begin human testing took as long as it did.

It can’t be said with certainty that all of the issues have been fully resolved. But considering the rigour of the FDA’s approval process, we might conclude they have at least been resolved to a point of satisfaction for the FDA.

Safe surgery

A precision robot known as Implant/r1 performs the surgical procedure to implant the Neuralink BCI. This robot surgeon had to be put through its paces to gather evidence that it could reliably and safely implant and remove the Neuralink BCI without damaging surrounding brain tissue, or creating the risk of infection, bleeding, inflammation or scarring.

Harmful side effects

Once implanted, the Neuralink BCI must function as intended. It must not unintentionally influence other brain functions, or cause any unwanted side effects such as seizures, headaches, mood changes, or cognitive impairment.

Safe power supply

In particular, overheating lithium-ion batteries can pose great risk to BCI users. When defective, such batteries have historically been known to overheat. They can even explode if the insulation between the cathode and anode (the metal electrode components) breaks down, resulting in a short circuit.

The longevity of the battery was also taken into account, as well as how easy it would be to safely replace from its position under the skin behind the ear. Since the FDA’s previous rejection, extensive tests have been conducted on the specially designed Neuralink battery to evaluate its performance, durability and bio-compatibility.

Wire migration

Then there is the risk of wire migration. The Link consists of a disk-shaped chip with very thin wire electrodes that connect to neurons in the brain.

Connecting these wires by means of a surgical robot is a major challenge in itself. But there is also the possibility the electrodes could move elsewhere in the brain over time due to natural movement, inflammation, or scar tissue formation. This would likely affect the proper functioning of the device, and could cause infection or damage to the brain tissue.

Neuralink had to conduct extensive animal studies and provide evidence its wires did not migrate significantly over time, or cause any adverse effects on the brain. The company also had to show it had a method for tracking and adjusting the position of the wires if this became necessary.

Implant removal

Another challenge Neuralink faced was that of safe implant removal. The FDA wanted to know how easy or difficult it would be to remove the device from the brain if this became necessary.

Data privacy and security

Strong safeguards are required to prevent data collected by the Link from being hacked, manipulated or otherwise misused. Neuralink would have had to assure the FDA it could avoid nightmare scenarios of hackers rendering its Link users vulnerable to interference, as well as guaranteeing the privacy of brain-wave data generated by the device.

The way ahead

Critics acknowledge the potential benefits of Neuralink, but caution the company to hasten slowly. Adequately addressing these issues will take time – and corners must not be cut when arriving at a solution.

Beyond the Link’s potential medical uses, Musk has made many radical claims regarding his future vision for the technology. He has claimed Neuralink could augment human intelligence by creating an on-demand connection with artificial intelligence systems – allowing, for example, improved cognition through enhanced memory, and improved learning and problem-solving skills.

He has even gone as far as to say the Link could allow high-bandwidth telepathic communication between two or more people connected via a mediating computer. Common sense would suggest these claims be put in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” category.

The situation with Neuralink has clear parallels with current advancements in AI (and the growing need to regulate it). As exciting as these technologies are, they must not be released to the public until proven to be safe. This can only be achieved by exhaustive testing.

David Tuffley, Senior Lecturer in Applied Ethics & CyberSecurity, Griffith University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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There’s a global push for peace talks in Ukraine — but U.S. and major allies are resisting

When Japan invited the leaders of Brazil, India and Indonesia to attend the G7 summit in Hiroshima, there were glimmers of hope that it might be a forum for these rising economic powers from the Global South to discuss their advocacy for peace in Ukraine with the wealthy Western G7 countries that are militarily allied with Ukraine and have so far remained deaf to pleas for peace.

But it was not to be. Instead, the Global South leaders were forced to sit and listen as their hosts announced their latest plans to tighten sanctions against Russia and further escalate the war by sending U.S.-built F-16 warplanes to Ukraine. 

The G7 summit stands in stark contrast to efforts of leaders from around the world who are trying to end the conflict. In the past, the leaders of Turkey, Israel and Italy have stepped up to try to mediate. Their efforts began to bear fruit back in April 2022, but were blocked by the West, particularly the U.S. and U.K., which did not want Ukraine to make an independent peace agreement with Russia. 

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Now that the war has dragged on for over a year with no end in sight, other leaders have stepped forward to try to push both sides to the negotiating table. In an intriguing new development, Denmark, a NATO country, has stepped forward to offer to host peace talks. On May 22, just days after the G7 meeting, Danish Foreign Minister Lokke Rasmussen said that his country would be ready to host a peace summit in July if Russia and Ukraine agreed to talk. 

“We need to put some effort into creating a global commitment to organize such a meeting,” said Rasmussen, mentioning that this would require support from China, Brazil, India and other nations that have expressed interest in mediating peace talks. Having an EU and NATO member promoting negotiations may well reflect a shift in how Europeans view the path forward in Ukraine.

Also reflecting this shift is a report by Seymour Hersh, citing U.S. intelligence sources, that the leaders of Poland, Czechia, Hungary and the three Baltic states, all NATO members, are talking to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy about the need to end the war and start rebuilding Ukraine so that the 5 million refugees now living in their countries can start to return home. On May 23, right-wing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said, “Looking at the fact that NATO is not ready to send troops, it’s obvious that there is no victory for poor Ukrainians on the battlefield,” and that the only way to end the conflict was for Washington to negotiate with Russia. 

Meanwhile, China’s peace initiative has been progressing, despite U.S. trepidation. Li Hui, China’s special representative for Eurasian affairs and former ambassador to Russia, has met with Vladimir Putin, Zelenskyy, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba and other European leaders to move the dialogue forward. Given its position as both Russia and Ukraine’s top trading partner, China is in a good position to engage with both sides.

Another initiative has come from President Lula da Silva of Brazil, who is creating a “peace club” of countries from around the world to work together to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. He appointed renowned diplomat Celso Amorim as his peace envoy. Amorim was Brazil’s foreign minister from 2003 to 2010, and was named the “world’s best foreign minister” in Foreign Affairs magazine. He also served as Brazil’s defense minister from 2011 to 2014, and is now Lula’s chief foreign policy adviser. Amorim has already had meetings with Putin in Moscow and Zelenskyy in Kyiv, and was well received by both parties.

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On May 16, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and other African leaders stepped into the fray, reflecting just how seriously this war is affecting the global economy through rising prices for energy and food. Ramaphosa announced a high-level mission by six African presidents, led by President Macky Sall of Senegal. He served, until recently, as chairman of the African Union and in that capacity spoke out forcefully for peace in Ukraine at the UN General Assembly in September 2022. 

The other members of the mission are Presidents Nguesso of Congo, Sisi of Egypt, Musevini of Uganda and Hichilema of Zambia. The African leaders are calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine, to be followed by serious negotiations to arrive at “a framework for lasting peace.” UN Secretary-General António Guterres has been briefed on their plans and has “welcomed the initiative.”

Blocking promising peace negotiations and deliberately choosing to prolong the war has made Western leaders active parties to a conflict in which they are not willing to put their own forces on the line.

Pope Francis and the Vatican are also seeking to mediate the conflict. “Let us not get used to conflict and violence. Let us not get used to war,” the pope preached. The Vatican has already helped facilitate successful prisoner exchanges between Russia and Ukraine, and Ukraine has asked for the pope’s help in reuniting families separated by the conflict. One sign of the pope’s commitment is his appointment of veteran negotiator Cardinal Matteo Zuppi as his peace envoy. Zuppi was instrumental in mediating talks that ended civil wars in Guatemala and Mozambique. 

Will any of these initiatives bear fruit? The possibility of getting Russia and Ukraine to talk depends on many factors, including their perceptions of potential gains from continued combat, their ability to maintain adequate supplies of weapons, and the growth of internal opposition. But it also depends on international pressure, and that is why these outside efforts are so critical and why U.S. and NATO countries’ opposition to talks must somehow be reversed.

The U.S. rejection or dismissal of peace initiatives illustrates the disconnect between two diametrically opposed approaches to resolving international disputes: diplomacy versus war. It also illustrates the disconnect between rising public sentiment against the war and the determination of U.S. policymakers to prolong it, including most leading Democrats and Republicans. 

A growing grassroots movement in the U.S. is working to change that: 

  • In May, foreign policy experts and grassroots activists put out paid advertisements in The New York Times and The Hill urging the U.S. government to be a force for peace. The Hill ad was endorsed by 100 organizations around the country, and community leaders organized in dozens of congressional districts to deliver the ad to their representatives. 
  • Faith-based leaders, over 1,000 of whom signed a letter to President Biden in December calling for a Christmas Truce, are showing their support for the Vatican’s peace initiative.
  • The U.S. Conference of Mayors, an organization that represents about 1,400 cities throughout the country, unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the president and Congress to “maximize diplomatic efforts to end the war as soon as possible by working with Ukraine and Russia to reach an immediate ceasefire and negotiate with mutual concessions in conformity with the United Nations Charter, knowing that the risks of wider war grow the longer the war continues.”
  • Key U.S. environmental leaders have recognized how disastrous this war is for the environment, including the possibility of a catastrophic nuclear war or an explosion in a nuclear power plant, and have sent a letter to Biden and Congress urging a negotiated settlement. ​​
  • On June 10-11, U.S. activists will join peacemakers from all over the world in Vienna for an International Summit for Peace in Ukraine.  

The initial decision of the U.S. and NATO member countries to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion had broad public support. However, blocking promising peace negotiations and deliberately choosing to prolong the war as a chance to “press” and “weaken” Russia changed the nature of the war and the U.S. role in it, making Western leaders active parties to a war in which they are not willing to put their own forces on the line.

Must our leaders wait until a murderous war of attrition has killed an entire generation of Ukrainians, and left Ukraine in a weaker negotiating position than it was in April 2022, before they respond to the international call for a return to the negotiating table? 

Or must our leaders take us to the brink of World War III, with all our lives on the line in an all-out nuclear war, before they will permit a ceasefire and a negotiated peace? 

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The injustice of infertility in a post-Roe world

Over the last couple of weeks, we watched as the FDA approval of mifepristone hung in a precarious state. Finally, the Supreme Court issued an order allowing access to mifepristone to continue–for now. The opinion of the federal judge who started it all represents a  lack of judicial discipline, overreach, and disregard for scientific expertise which jeopardizes our personal right to make decisions about our health and the health of our families. 

As an obstetrician/gynecologist with over 25 years of clinical experience, I am chilled by the impact which misguided judicial rulings have on the patient-provider relationship and ethical principles they invoke. . I worry about the quality of health care when politicians and judges decide to practice medicine instead of healthcare providers. As a provider who cared for couples challenged by infertility, I’ve seen firsthand how limiting reproductive care affects families who are trying to conceive, too. 

I was raised as a Catholic, spent my K-12 years in a parochial school system, and attended a Jesuit medical school. My Mother was a devout Catholic, attended daily mass and championed an interfaith council in the small town where I was raised. Yet, we are also strong proponents of reproductive rights.

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As a medical student at Georgetown School of Medicine, I learned about bioethical principles from experts, including Edmund D. Pellegrino, at one of the oldest academic ethics centers in the world founded in 1971. I learned how to think and not what to think. We were taught about the framework and application of the Georgetown Mantra of Bioethics when making shared treatment plans with our patients:

  • 1.  protect the right of individuals to make decisions about their own healthcare
  • 2. Do no harm or injury to the patient, either through acts of commission or omission
  • 3. e kind and do what is in the best interests of the patient 
  • 4. Practice equity and fairness in treatment

In light of this framework, consider how judicial and government involvement could affect important healthcare decisions between patients and their healthcare providers. There are three fertility-related scenarios where this framework becomes even more vitally important to a positive health outcome: managing the number of fetuses in a multiple pregnancy, testing embryos for genetic abnormalities, and deciding what to do with frozen embryos.

Multiple pregnancies

Multifetal pregnancy reduction is a procedure that can be done in the first or early second trimester to reduce the number of fetuses in a pregnancy with more than one baby. Fertility treatments are one of the reasons why more multifetal pregnancies are happening.

However, having a pregnancy with multiple fetuses can increase the risk of complications for both the pregnant person and the babies. These complications may include pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and health issues such as hypertension, preeclampsia, and gestational diabetes for the pregnant person. For the babies, complications may include prematurity, cerebral palsy, learning disabilities, slow language development, behavioral difficulties, chronic lung disease, developmental delay, and even death.

Couples are faced with the difficult dilemma of whether to terminate the pregnancy, continue with all the fetuses, or reduce the number of fetuses by selective termination.

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It’s important for people who are pregnant with more than one baby to be aware of these risks and to work closely with their healthcare provider to monitor their pregnancy and make informed decisions about their care.

Genetic testing

Preimplantation Genetic Testing (PGT) is a way for doctors to check the genetic material of embryos before they are implanted into a woman’s uterus during in vitro fertilization (IVF). This helps to ensure that the embryos are healthy and have the right number of chromosomes, which can help reduce the risk of genetic disorders or miscarriages.

During PGT, a small sample of cells is taken from the embryo and analyzed for genetic abnormalities. This process is done in a way that is safe for the embryo and does not harm its development. Once the genetic testing is complete, the doctors can choose the healthiest and most viable embryos for implantation.

Where is the respect for autonomy, doing no harm, advocating for the patient, and justice in removing the freedom to make difficult health care decisions for you and your family?

PGT can be especially helpful for couples who have a higher risk of passing on certain genetic conditions to their children. It can also increase the chances of a successful pregnancy for women who have experienced multiple miscarriages or have had difficulty conceiving.

Overall, PGT is a powerful tool that can help couples start or expand their families with greater peace of mind about the health of their future children.

Couples may choose to pursue PGT if:

  • One of them is a carrier of a known genetic disorder
  • The pregnant parent has a history of recurrent miscarriages
  • The pregnant parent is older or experiencing reduced ovarian function
  • The couple has undergone multiple failed fertility treatments
  • They have personal reasons for wanting to undergo PGT, such as a desire for greater peace of mind about the health of their future children

Couples need to weigh several factors before deciding whether to proceed with PGT. Even if the PGT results are “normal” or negative, there is still a possibility of a newborn with genetic abnormalities. Furthermore, there is a risk of miscarriage (between 7 and 10 percent) and potential harm or loss of the embryo during testing due to handling or manipulation. It’s important to discuss all these factors with a trusted healthcare provider to make an informed decision about whether PGT is right for you.

Unclaimed embryos

One of the most significant difficulties with unclaimed embryos is deciding on the appropriate course of action for them. One option is donation for scientific research or embryologist training. This can provide valuable training opportunities for embryologists and other medical professionals as well as be used to develop new treatments and technologies. Another option is to donate the embryos to other couples for reproductive purposes and potentially provide a new chance at parenthood for others. Lastly, discarding the embryos is also a possibility. By considering all the available options and seeking guidance from medical professionals, couples and individuals can make an informed decision that aligns with their values and beliefs.

The future

Will couples and their physicians be able to continue to freely make these painstaking and difficult decisions or will courts and politicians limit bioethical principles of patient autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice and erode the sanctity of the patient/provider relationship?

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Consider a world where…

  • It is a crime to reduce the number of fetuses by selective termination, thereby removing patients and providers from the decision making. This could sacrifice the outcome of the pregnant parent and remaining fetuses in favor of the one of few fetuses. 
  • IVF doctors are held liable if PGT leads to a miscarriage
  • Courts and legislatures have significant or complete influence over what to do with frozen embryos instead of patients and providers; discarding embryos not needed for reproduction may no longer be an option

Where is the respect for autonomy, doing no harm, advocating for the patient, and justice in removing the freedom to make difficult health care decisions for you and your family? What’s at stake is our freedom to choose and freedom to decide—in a nutshell, our democracy.

We share a lot of similar day-to-day problems, a sense of community, and a desire for what’s best for our families. Let’s consciously focus on how to think and not be led by what to think. Hope lies within us and unites us. Let’s hold each other accountable for defending our right to our personal health care decisions, especially for aspiring parents. Our democracy hangs in the balance.

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Corporations are planning to mine the deep ocean where 5,000 new species were just discovered

If you were to take a boat into the middle of the Pacific Ocean, you would eventually stumble into a submarine fracture zone that is twice the size of India at roughly six million square kilometers. Known as the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), the region is rich in minerals like cobalt and nickel and therefore immensely attractive to deep sea mining interests. Yet mining operations inevitably take a toll on nearby wildlife, and because the CCZ is so poorly understood, researchers conducting a study for the scientific journal Current Biology decided to create the first-ever “CCZ checklist” — that is, a list of all the species that inhabit this massive region.

The results? After reviewing data from all of the research expeditions performed in the region, the scientists learned that the CCZ has a total of 5,578 different species — and that between 88% and 92% of them had never before been discovered.

The scientists learned that the CCZ has a total of 5,578 different species — and that between 88% and 92% of them had never before been discovered.

The five most prevalent types of species discovered include Arthropoda (27%), a phylum that includes insects and crustaceans; Annelida (18%), a phylum that includes earthworms and leeches; Nematoda (16%), a phylum that includes human pinworm and heartworms; Echinodermata (13%), a phylum that includes starfish and sea urchins; and Porifera (7%), a phylum that includes sponges. 

“We share this planet with all this amazing biodiversity, and we have a responsibility to understand it and protect it,” Muriel Rabone, a deep-sea ecologist at the Natural History Museum London, UK, said in a statement.

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Humanity is on track to cause one million species to go extinct, according to UN report

Regarding some of the exotic samples obtained from the CCZ, Rabone added that “there’s some just remarkable species down there. Some of the sponges look like classic bath sponges, and some look like vases. They’re just beautiful. One of my favorites is the glass sponges. They have these little spines, and under the microscope, they look like tiny chandeliers or little sculptures.”

Many other creatures are waiting to be cataloged alongside these beautiful weirdos, with an estimated species richness ranging from 6,000 to 8,000, the researchers note. However, the CCZ has already been divvied up and parceled off for major mining companies, meaning these animals are already under threat and until recently, we didn’t even know they existed. “Given mining operations may be imminent, a key consideration for the CCZ is the application of biodiversity data for environmental management, in particular assessing species extinction risk,” the authors write.

This is hardly the first report to highlight Earth’s growing biodiversity crisis. A 2022 report by a United Nations body known as the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) found that one million animal and plant species are on track to extinction. The report noted that this is a serious problem even if you are not a conservationist, since “billions of people in all regions of the world rely on and benefit from the use of wild species for food, medicine, energy, income and many other purposes.” The report added that humans’ way of life is in danger because “the sustainability of the use of wild species in the future is likely to be challenged by climate change, increasing demand and technological advances.”

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A 2020 report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF)… determined that the overall population sizes of “mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish” had plummeted by 68 percent since 1970.

“The sustainability of uses of wild species is context specific,” Dr. Marla R. Emery, co-chair of the IPBES Sustainable Use of Wild Species Assessment and a scientific advisor for the Norwegian Institute for Nature Research, told Salon by email at the time. She pointed out that life on Earth is imperiled by practices such as over-fishing, over-hunting, unsustainable agricultural development and other “economic demands,” as well as even by the presence or absence of “the systems that are in place to regulate and govern their activities.”

Similarly, a 2021 study from the journal Communications Earth & Environment that the average predicated rate of extinction for freshwater animals and plants today is three orders of magnitude higher than it was during the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (K–Pg) — or the incident 66 million years ago when an asteroid or comet struck the planet and wiped out three-quarters of all the then-existing animal and plant species.

“Our results indicate that, unless substantial conservation effort is directed to freshwater ecosystems, the present extinction crisis will have a severe impact to freshwater biota for millions of years to come,” the authors explained.

This theme was reinforced by a 2020 report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). It determined that the overall population sizes of “mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish” had plummeted by 68 percent since 1970; that humans have been overusing the planet’s biocapacity by no less than 56 percent; and that humans have destroyed no less than 85 percent of the area of wetlands and significantly altered 75 percent of Earth’s land surface (non-ice). 

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“War on the environment”: Samuel Alito just issued a radical rewrite of the Clean Water Act

It was a really bad week for America’s wetlands and for flood-prone neighborhoods in New Jersey. The same ultra-right-wing Supreme Court that rolled back women’s reproductive rights, put millions of formerly regulated wetlands beyond the protection of the U.S. EPA because they were not contiguous to the nation’s surface waters, ignoring decades of precedent and basic earth science.

Trenton native son Justice Sam Alito, who wrote for the conservative majority opinion that radically rolled back essential wetland protections has no doubt seen the ravages of the mighty Delaware over his lifetime when it jumps its banks and converts West State Street to a mighty river.

But in weighing the equities in the case, the conservative court put their thumb on the scale in favor of the narrow property rights of the Idaho couple that sought to develop the marginal land. And in that decision, they threw to the wolves the millions of working-class Americans in places like Paterson, Rahway, and Sayreville who pay the final price when quick rising flood waters trap them and their children in basement apartments.

In an unusual alignment, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote an opinion on behalf of the court’s liberal minority Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson that accused his conservative colleagues of rewriting the Clean Water Act” and dismissing “45 years of consistent agency practice.”

“By narrowing the (Clean Water) Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands,” Kavanaugh wrote, “the court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.

“This is part of the rogue Supreme courts war on the environment,” Jeff Tittel wrote to InsiderNJ. “Now, with its shameful dismantling of wetlands and clean water protections, this rollback will mean more flooding and more water pollution. Once again, the Court ignores science and law while doing the bidding of agribusiness and corporate polluters. There is no bottom to treachery of this court rolling back decades of progress on the environment, woman’s rights, civil rights and democracy “

“In New Jersey, the opinion may have some impacts but luckily New Jersey’s statutes and regulations do a better job of recognizing the importance of wetland to water quality,” wrote Michael Pisauro, an attorney, and policy director of the New Jersey-based Watershed Institute. “To the extent interstate waters flow through states that do not have adequate protections, a strong state protection will have limited effect.”

Closer to home, Gov. Murphy continued his climate crisis fan dance by delaying yet again the rollout of the Inland Flood Protection Rule and the proposing of the New Jersey Protecting Against Climate Threats/ Resilient Environments and Landscapes Rules.

Without this long-promised update, development in New Jersey’s most chronically flooded lands will be based on outdated rainfall data from decades ago which in turn means greenlighting dozens of ill-advised projects like Bridge Point 8, a controversial warehouse development in West Windsor that’s a complex of seven warehouses with a total of 5.5 million square feet set on a 650-acre site.

On May 22, dozens of New Jersey environmental leaders wrote Murphy that they were “deeply disappointed that these rules have been delayed” considering that the Governor’s own Executive Order 100 “called for adoption of these rules by January 2022, yet we are still waiting for them to be adopted or even proposed.”

“We, the undersigned organizations, representing hundreds of thousands of citizen members across the state, are writing to urge you to immediately adopt the pending Inland Flood Protection Rule and propose the New Jersey Protecting Against Climate Threats/ Resilient Environments and Landscapes Rules,” the coalition wrote. “Both sets of rules are urgently needed to protect New Jersey residents, municipalities, businesses, and the environment from the impacts of climate change.”

The letter continued. “During the last weekend in April, two back-to-back storms dumped almost two months’ worth of rain in two days on the Garden State. Once again, New Jersey residents spent a weekend dealing with overflowing rivers and streams, flood warnings, and even water rescues.”

The environmentalists noted a new hurricane season was about to start, and that it had been three and half years since Murphy issued his much-hyped Executive Order 100, and that a year and a half had elapsed since rules were to be adopted.

“You promised to take action to protect New Jersey from the effects of these and even larger storms that have become the norm,” the group wrote. “Executive Order 100 was a bold and widely celebrated commitment by you and your administration. We urge you to take immediate and bold action to protect our communities from the devastating effects of climate change. We need your strong leadership and action to protect our state, and we expect you to fulfill your campaign promises regarding climate change and the environment.”

Gov. Murphy’s press office referred an InsiderNJ press query on the letter to the DEP, which did not return a call by press time.

Without this long-promised update, development in New Jersey’s most chronically flooded lands will be based on outdated rainfall data from decades ago which in turn means greenlighting dozens of ill-advised projects like Bridge Point 8, a controversial warehouse development in West Windsor that’s a complex of seven warehouses with a total of 5.5 million square feet set on a 650-acre site.

Tirza Wahrman of West Windsor is a former member of the town’s Environmental Commission and served in the Corzine and Christie administration as deputy attorney general in the Attorney General’s Environmental Practice Section.

“What I am concerned about is that I know from taking part in meetings with NJ DEP staff that the 5.4 million square foot Bridge Point site would not pass muster under updated flood maps, Wahrman told InsiderNJ during a phone interview.  “We’ve been told that directly however under these 1999 maps, believe it or not– 24 years old— predating any data on climate change and future precipitation and the very complicated modeling that DEP did—Bridge Point could slip through. In fact, it’s gotten one of the two permits from DEP.”

“Governor Murphy has made bold and necessary statements that New Jersey needs to prepare for the future and protect itself from increased flooding caused by climate change,” wrote Pisauro, with the Watershed Institute. “That additional flooding is occurring now and yet we wait.  Every day we wait, more and more developments qualify under the old, out-of-date, not protective standards.  That is locking in decades of unnecessary, additional flooding that our communities will suffer through.”

Pisauro continued. “We will all pay for these delays in the costs to rebuild our homes, stores, offices, roads, and bridges.  We will pay the cost of rescuing people trapped in flood waters.  All of this is unnecessary, because the tools, i.e., the regulations, have been ready for over a year and yet, we still wait losing opportunities to mitigate flooding.”

“Governor Murphy’s placing an indefinite hold on DEP’s adoption of the inland flood protection rules reveals a cavalier response to climate change, contrary to his proclaimed bold leadership,” wrote Elliot Ruga, policy, and communications director for the Highlands Coalition. “The proposed rules, designed to build higher and to better respond to the stormwater conditions of today, updating rules that were based on clearly obsolete rainfall statistics going back 30 years. Every structure permitted under the existing rules, when we know better, is unnecessarily putting property and life at risk.”

Gov. Murphy’s Executive Order 100 cited a 2019 report  “New Jersey’s Rising Seas and Changing Coastal Storms”  prepared by Rutgers University for the Department of Environmental Protection (“DEP”) that showed “that sea-level rise projections in New Jersey are more than two times the global average and that the sea level in New Jersey could rise from 2000 levels by up to 1.1 feet by 2030, 2.1 feet by 2050, and 6.3 feet by 2100, underscoring the urgent need for action to protect the State from adverse climate change impacts.”

In the late summer of 2021, Hurricane Ida took 90 lives in total when it inundated a nine-state swath of the Northeast. Damage estimates for New Jersey ranged between $8 to $10 billion and in the $7.5 to $9 billion range in New York.

In October 2012, SuperStorm Sandy caused $70.2 billion worth of damage, left 8.5 million people without power,  and destroyed 650,000 homes and was responsible for the deaths of at least 72 Americans.

Aggression made easy: The wars we don’t (care to) see

[The following is excerpted and adapted from David Barsamian’s recent interview with Norman Solomon at AlternativeRadio.org.]

David Barsamian: American Justice Robert Jackson was the chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials. He made an opening statement to the Tribunal on November 21, 1945, because there was some concern at the time that it would be an example of victor’s justice. He said this: “If certain acts of violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down the rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Norman Solomon: It goes to the point that, unless we have a single standard of human rights, a single standard of international conduct and war, we end up with an Orwellian exercise at which government leaders are always quite adept but one that’s still intellectually, morally, and spiritually corrupt. Here we are, so long after the Nuremberg trials, and the supreme crime of aggression, the launching of a war, is not only widespread but has been sanitized, even glorified. We’ve had this experience in one decade after another in which the United States has attacked a country in violation of international law, committing (according to the Nuremberg Tribunal) “the supreme international crime,” and yet not only has there been a lack of remorse, but such acts have continued to be glorified.

The very first quote in my book War Made Invisible is from Aldous Huxley who, 10 years before the Nuremberg trials, said, “The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human.” Here we are in 2023 and it’s still a challenge to analyze, illuminate, and push back against that essential purpose of propagandists around the world and especially in our own country where, in an ostensible democracy, we should have the most capacity to change policy.

Right now, we’re in a situation where, unfortunately, across a lot of the political spectrum, including some of the left, folks think that you have to choose between aligning yourself with U.S. foreign policy and its acts of aggression or Russian foreign policy and its acts of aggression. Personally, I think it’s both appropriate and necessary to condemn war on Ukraine, and Washington’s hypocrisy doesn’t in any way let Russia off the hook. By the same token, Russia’s aggression shouldn’t let the United States off the hook for the tremendous carnage we’ve created in this century. I mean, if you add up the numbers, in the last nearly twenty-five years, the country by far the most responsible for slaughtering more people in more lands through wars of aggression is… yes, the United States of America.

Barsamian: What’s your assessment of the war coverage of PBS and NPR? You know, a rarified, polite media where people speak in complete sentences without any shouting. But have they presented dissident voices to challenge the hegemonic assumptions you just cited when it comes to American war policies?

Solomon: The style there is different, of course, but consider it just a long form of the very same propaganda framework. So, you can listen to a 10-minute segment on All Things Considered or a panel discussion on the PBS NewsHour and the style and civility, the length of the sentences, as you say, may be refreshing to the ear, but it also normalizes the same attitudes, the same status-quo assumptions about American foreign policy. I won’t say never, but in my experience, it’s extremely rare for an NPR or PBS journalist to assertively question the underlying prerogatives of the U.S. government to attack other countries, even if it’s said with a more erudite ambiance.

You’ve got NPR and PBS unwilling to challenge, but all too willing to propagate and perpetuate the assumption that, yes, the United States might make mistakes, it might even commit blunders — a popular word for the U.S. invasion of Iraq that resulted in literally hundreds of thousands of deaths. Still, the underlying message is invariably that yes, we can (and should) at times argue over when, whether, and how to attack certain countries with the firepower of the Pentagon, but those decisions do need to be made and the U.S. has the right to do so if that’s the best judgment of the wise people in the upper reaches of policy in Washington.

Barsamian: Jeff Cohen, the founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), has talked about the guest list on such PBS and NPR programs. There’s a golden Rolodex of what he calls “formers” — former undersecretaries of state, former lieutenant colonels, retired generals, et al. But what about dissident voices like Medea Benjamin, yourself, or Noam Chomsky?

Solomon: Over the years, FAIR has done a number of studies ranging from commercial networks to NPR and the PBS NewsHour, and found that, particularly when issues of war and peace are on the table, it’s extremely rare to have opponents of U.S. military action on the air, sometimes below one percent of the interviewees. And this is considered “objective journalism” and goes hand in hand with a deeper precept, usually unspoken but certainly in play in the real world: that if an American journalist is in favor of our wars, that’s objectivity, but if opposed, that’s bias.

I’m sometimes asked: Why do journalists so often stay in line? They’re not, as in some other countries, going to be hauled off to prison. So, what makes them feel compelled to be as conformist as they are? And a lot of the explanation has to do with mortgages and the like — hey, I want to pay for my children’s college education, I need financial security, so on and so forth.

To my mind, it’s a tremendous irony that we have so many examples of very brave journalists for American media outlets going into war zones, sometimes being wounded, occasionally even losing their lives, and then the ones who get back home, back to the newsrooms, turn out to be afraid of the boss. They don’t want to lose their syndicated columns, their front-page access. This dangerous dynamic regiments the journalism we get.

And keep in mind that, living in the United States, we have, with very few exceptions, no firsthand experience of the wars this country has engaged in and continues to be engaged in. So, we depend on the news media, a dependence that’s very dangerous in a democracy where the precept is that we need the informed consent of the governed, while what we’re getting is their uninformed pseudo-consent. Consider that a formula for the warfare state we have.

Barsamian: At the White House Correspondents’ dinner President Biden said, “Journalism is not a crime. The free press is a pillar, maybe the pillar of a free society.” Great words from the White House.

Solomon: President Biden, like his predecessors in the Oval Office, loves to speak about the glories of the free press and say that journalism is a wonderful aspect of our society — until the journalists do something he and the government he runs really don’t like. A prime example is Julian Assange. He’s a journalist, a publisher, an editor, and he’s sitting in prison in Great Britain being hot-wired for transportation to the United States. I sat through the two-week trial in the federal district of northern Virginia of CIA whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling and I can tell you it was a kangaroo court. That’s the court Julian Assange has a ticket to if his extradition continues.

And what’s his so-called crime? It’s journalism. WikiLeaks committed journalism. It exposed the war crimes of the United States in Iraq through documents it released, through the now-notorious video that came to be called “Collateral Murder,” showing the wanton killing of a number of people on the ground in Iraq by a U.S. military helicopter. It provided a compendium of evidence that the United States had systemically engaged in war crimes under the rubric of the so-called War on Terror. So, naturally, the stance of the U.S. government remains: this man Assange is dangerous; he must be imprisoned.

The attitude of the corporate media, Congress, and the White House has traditionally been and continues to be that the U.S. stance in the world can be: do as we say, not as we do. So, the USA is good at pointing fingers at Russia or countries that invade some other nation, but when the U.S. does it, it’s another thing entirely. Such dynamics, while pernicious, especially among a nuclear-armed set of nations, are reflexes people in power have had for a long time.

More than a century ago, William Dean Howells wrote a short story called “Editha.” Keep in mind that this was after the United States had been slaughtering hundreds of thousands of people in the Philippines. In it, a character says, “What a thing it is to have a country that can’t be wrong, but if it is, is right, anyway!”

Now, here we are in 2023 and it’s not that different, except when it comes to the scale of communications, of a media that’s so much more pervasive. If you read the op-ed pages and editorial sections of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets of the liberal media, you’ll find such doublethink well in place. Vladimir Putin, of course, is a war criminal. Well, I happen to think he is a war criminal. I also happen to think that George W. Bush is a war criminal, and we could go on to all too many other examples of high U.S. government officials where that description applies no less than to Vladimir Putin.

Can you find a single major newspaper that’s been willing to editorialize that George W. Bush — having ordered the invasion of Iraq, costing hundreds of thousands of lives based on a set of lies — was a war criminal? It just ain’t gonna happen. In fact, one of the things I was particularly pleased (in a grim sort of way) to explore in my book was the rehabilitation of that war criminal, providing a paradigm for the presidents who followed him and letting them off the hook, too.

I quote, for instance, President Obama speaking to troops in Afghanistan. You could take one sentence after another from his speeches there and find almost identical ones that President Lyndon Johnson used in speaking to American troops in Vietnam in 1966. They both talked about how U.S. soldiers were so compassionate, cared so much about human life, and were trying to help the suffering people of Vietnam or Afghanistan. That pernicious theme seems to accompany almost any U.S. war: that, with the best of intentions, the U.S. is seeking to help those in other countries. It’s a way of making the victims at the other end of U.S. firepower — to use a word from my book title — invisible.

This is something I was able to do some thinking and writing about in my book. There are two tiers of grief in our media and our politics from Congress to the White House — ours and theirs. Our grief (including that of honorary semi-Americans like the Ukrainians) is focused on those who are killed by official enemy governments of the United States. That’s the real tier of grief and so when the media covers, as it should, the suffering of people in Ukraine thanks to Russia’s war of aggression, their suffering is made as real as can be. And yet, when it’s the U.S. slaughtering people in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere, that’s something else entirely. When it comes to the people at the other end of U.S. weaponry, the civilians, hundreds of thousands of them directly slaughtered, and millions indirectly killed by U.S. warfare, their tier of grief isn’t, with rare exceptions, on the media map. Those human beings just don’t matter.

Here in the USA, people find this unpleasant to hear or even think about. But our own humanity has been besmirched, damaged, undermined by such silences, which, in many ways, represent the most powerful propaganda of all. We need to break that silence.

Barsamian: The media landscape is radically changing from podcasts to blogs to all kinds of new media. Will that help?

Solomon: Technology’s never going to save us. Robert McChesney, the scholar of media history, has written eloquently about this. Every advance in technology was accompanied by these outsized promises that therefore we will have democracy. That’s going back to the first telegraphs, then radio, then broadcast TV, then cable television. At every step, people were told, hey, this technology means that no longer do we have a top-down relationship to power, we can make the changes happen ourselves. And yet as we’ve seen with all of those technologies, and this includes the Internet, technology never freed anybody.

Barsamian: What’s to be done? What practical steps would you recommend?

Solomon: I believe in organizing as the key element in turning around such dire circumstances, including corporate power, class war waged from the top down, and the militarization of our society and our foreign policy. That means a shift in mindset to see that we’re not consuming history off the shelf like Wonder Bread. As the saying goes, whatever your first major concern may be, your second should be the media. We need to build media organizations and support the ones that are doing progressive work, support them financially, support them in terms of spreading the word and also of learning more about how to — and actually implementing how to — organize both people we know and those we don’t. And I think that’s pretty antithetical to the messages the media regularly sends us, because really, the main messages from, say, television involve urging us to go out and buy things (and maybe vote once in a while). Well, we do need to go out and buy things and we certainly should vote, but the real changes are going to come when we find ways to work together to create political power both inside and outside the electoral arena.

When you look at the corruption of the Federal Communications Commission, for instance, that’s not going to change until different people are in office — and we’re not going to get different people in office until we elect them to overcome the power of Big Money. And there’s also the real history that we need to be reminded of: that everything we have to be proud of in this country was a result of people organizing from the bottom up and generating social movements. That’s truly where our best future lies.

Barsamian: You conclude War Made Invisible with a quote from James Baldwin.

Solomon: “Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

Ron DeSantis signs bill shielding Elon Musk’s SpaceX from lawsuits

Newly announced GOP presidential candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) signed a bill into state law on Thursday that protects private companies that orchestrate spaceflights from liability lawsuits if a crew member gets injured or dies as a result of an accident.

The legislation became law exactly one day after DeSantis announced his 2024 presidential campaign in a Twitter Spaces event hosted by Twitter owner Elon Musk, who also owns the private spaceflight company SpaceX.

“Twenty-four hours after appearing with Elon Musk to announce his campaign for president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis just signed a bill into law that will shield Musk’s SpaceX and other private space companies from negligence lawsuits after an explosion or a crash,” wrote Jason Garcia, an investigative reporter from Florida.

The text of the legislation gives tremendous leeway to private spaceflight companies, specifically shielding them from lawsuits relating to “injury to or death of a participant or crew resulting from spaceflight activities” as long as certain warnings were made to crew members prior to launch. Lawsuits could only move forward in certain situations, including cases in which companies had “actual knowledge of an extraordinarily dangerous condition” that is not inherent to space travel before an accident took place.

The bill’s signing comes almost exactly a month after a large, unmanned SpaceX rocket exploded over the Gulf of Mexico in Texas, resulting in catastrophic environmental damage, including a fire at a nearby state park.

Although the Florida legislature passed the bill prior to DeSantis’s presidential announcement, observers noted that the governor’s signing of the bill a day after Musk helped launch his campaign gave the appearance of a quid pro quo.

“What did Elon Musk get for putting the full force of Twitter — broken though it may be — behind Ron DeSantis?” the Twitter account for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked. “DeSantis just signed a bill that could potentially shield Musk and SpaceX from being sued for accidents that injure or kill crew members.”

The Twitter Spaces event in which DeSantis announced his 2024 campaign was rife with glitches and technical difficulties. At one point, the event required a complete restart, resulting in hundreds of thousands of listeners dropping off before DeSantis even said a word on the broadcast.

Observers have noticed a decline in Twitter’s quality in the months since Musk purchased the site, including more frequent outages and difficulties loading media in tweets. Musk’s loosening of restrictions on what content can be shared has also led to a spike in hateful posts from far right users.

Anonymous Twitter employees indicated that mismanagement of the social media website was partially responsible for the glitches, telling The New York Times that preparation for the Twitter Spaces event was lacking, and that no planning had been made to account for “site reliability issues” before the launch of the broadcast.

“The technical problems on Wednesday showed how Twitter is operating far from seamlessly, turning what was supposed to be a crowning event for Mr. Musk into something of an embarrassment,” Times technology reporter Ryan Mac wrote.

Legal experts: Trump could be charged under “Espionage Act” over report that he showed off docs

Prosecutors obtained evidence that former President Donald Trump kept classified documents in his office and sometimes showed them to people, according to a recent report from The Washington Post. 

Legal experts say the report suggests the former president may be facing more serious charges than obstruction.

“The news report suggests an escalation in the seriousness of the charges Trump faces,” former federal prosecutor Kevin O’Brien told Salon. “Evidence that he showed highly sensitive documents to third parties implicates the Espionage Act, which forbids willfully conveying such a document ‘to any person not entitled to receive it,’ or willfully failing to deliver the same on demand to a government officer or employee entitled to receive it. Trump appears to fall under both prongs of the statute, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison per violation.”

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Experts: Report that Trump lawyer was “misled” about Mar-a-Lago search could be bad news for Trump

As the investigation into the former president’s retention of national security materials at Mar-a-Lago nears its end, the FBI and Justice Department have discovered instances of potential obstruction that provide more detailed and specific information than what was previously disclosed, the Post reported. 

It also expands the timeline of possible instances of obstruction under investigation, extending from events at Mar-a-Lago prior to the subpoena to the period following the FBI search conducted on August 8, according to the Post. 

Prior to receiving the subpoena in May, Trump had engaged in what some officials have referred to as a “dress rehearsal,” which involved the movement of government documents that he wished to retain. Prosecutors have collected evidence related to this matter, according to individuals familiar with the investigation, the Post reported.

“Disclosing classified information to an unauthorized person is a different and more serious offense than simply retaining classified information,” former U.S. Attorney Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor, told Salon. “And a disclosure to a foreign government is the most serious offense of all. If a disclosure is made with reason to believe that the United States would be injured or the foreign government advantaged, the penalty is up to life in prison or even death, as in the case of the Rosenbergs.”

Related

“It’s crazy in there”: Knives out on Trump’s legal team over worries one of them could be a “snitch”

Prosecutors have also uncovered evidence in recent weeks indicating that Trump’s employees at Mar-a-Lago brought boxes of documents back to the storage room just one day before the visit of justice department officials who were scheduled to collect the classified documents that had been subpoenaed, according to The Washington Post.

Since last year, the Justice Department has been investigating the retention of sensitive records after the National Archives found 15 boxes of materials from when Trump served as president. 

In August, the FBI conducted a search at Mar-a-Lago, leading to the discovery of over 100 documents labeled as classified at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.

Trump has maintained no wrongdoing in the matter and has claimed that the investigation is part of an alleged Democratic scheme to prevent him from serving as president again. 

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

Even prior to the most recent reporting, Trump faced serious criminal exposure for allegedly retaining highly sensitive documents, Temidayo Aganga-Williams, partner at Selendy Gay Elsberg and former senior investigative counsel for the House Jan. 6 committee, told Salon. 

“As with any criminal case, the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in charging decisions is central,” Aganga-Williams said. “If true then President Trump not only unlawfully retained classified documents, but also showed them to others, it will make it more likely that special counsel Jack Smith will seek authority to charge the former president.”

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The new Grocery Code of Conduct should benefit both Canadians and the food industry

The cost of filling your grocery cart in Canada increased by 10.3% in 2022 and is projected to increase by an additional 5 to 7% this year.

What is particularly troubling about the food crisis is that the high prices seem to be impacting all food product categories, suggesting the problem is affecting the entire food supply chain rather than specific items or sub-sectors.

In response to this and other concerns, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food initiated studies on Food Price Inflation and Global Food Insecurity, which included two separate meetings with the heads of four of the five major Canadian grocery retailers.

A result of the meetings — and a cause for cautious optimism — is the decision to develop a grocery code of conduct to address issues in the food supply chain.

The code is meant to address long-standing issues in the industry, including grocery retailers imposing large fee increases on suppliers without notice.

 

Standing committee meetings

On March 8, the presidents of Loblaw, Metro and Empire (Sobeys) were summoned to Ottawa to testify before the House of Commons agriculture committee. The president of Walmart Canada appeared before the committee on March 23.

In both meetings, the executives indicated that food price inflation was due to problems with global supply chains in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic: commodity price increases, labour shortages, transportation bottlenecks, weather disasters and higher energy costs.

To what extent those meetings helped clarify the complex issues affecting grocery supply chains appears to be still in debate. But the decision to create a grocery code of conduct could make these meetings worth it in the long run.

The code of conduct is currently being drafted by grocers, suppliers and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, a government department focused on the country’s agriculture and agri-food sector.

 

What the new code should include

The grocery code of conduct is still in development. The draft seems to prioritize resolving disputes, rather than making long-term structural changes to the way the supply chain operates.

But this could change in the future. According to members of the code’s steering committee, it will be possible to amend the code once it’s up for review in 18 months.

As an expert in supply chain management, I have recommendations for future editions of the code to strengthen relationships and performance across the industry. These changes would benefit not only the companies involved, but also Canadian consumers.

The ultimate target of the new code should be consumers, while also securing prosperity of the supply chain. To do this, the code should accomplish two things: promoting horizontal competition while also fostering vertical co-operation in the industry.

Horizontal competition refers to rivalry between organizations operating at the same level to gain customers — like competing retailers, for example.

Vertical co-operation aims to strengthen relationships between companies operating at various stages of the supply chain. Its objective is to improve collaboration in areas including production, distribution, information sharing and pricing.

 

Supply chain management practices

Supply chain management practices could be used to foster both horizontal competition and vertical co-operation in the supply chain.

Extensive academic research has documented the successful implementation of these practices across industries including, but not limited to, groceries.

There is equally ample evidence highlighting the benefits of these management practices in areas such as supply and logistics costs, delivery reliability and sustainability.

The research recommends introducing collaborative practices that go beyond the dispute-resolution measures outlined in the code draft. These practices include:

  1. Collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). This program aims to improve coordination across the supply chain to reduce uncertainty, improve responsiveness and minimize costs such as bloated inventories and expedited orders. CPFR is highly applicable to the grocery supply chain. In fact, it was initially developed by Walmart in 1996 and is currently used by the LCBO and other consumer goods companies in Canada. The code should encourage the adoption of specific CPFR practices, such as joint forecasting between buyers and suppliers.

  2. Target costing. Under this approach, buyers and suppliers work together to reduce costs to guarantee a maximum selling price while protecting margins. As authors James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones have indicated, this approach requires the “relentless scrutiny of every activity along the value stream.” For this approach to be effective, it must be collaborative and include the fair distribution of responsibility, authority and benefits among supply chain partners.

  3. Information sharing. Research indicates that knowledge exchange yields significant benefits to both buyers and supply networks. The grocery code could facilitate the distribution and exploitation of knowledge, technologies and best practices across the supply chain. These processes would enable joint problem-solving, improve optimization and the ability to cope with variations in supply and demand.

Ultimately, competitive goals should apply to the entire supply chain, rather than to specific stages. It is well-known that squeezing suppliers can, in many instances, quickly erode the supply base. These policies can be severely detrimental not only to the whole industry   — including buyers — but also to consumers.

What we need is a comprehensive code of conduct that ensures the long-term sustainability of the industry, while also protecting consumers in the event of future supply imbalances.

Giovani J.C. da Silveira, Professor, Operations and Supply Chain Management, University of Calgary

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Dated, goofy or both”: Lower your grocery bill by retiring these 11 tired dishes

The current price of two weeks’ worth of groceries for a family of three is about $72k. OK, maybe it doesn’t cost much, but I’m not the only one who feels these prices are too high. 

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report that stated: “While food prices generally increased about 2% in prior years, they increased about 11% from 2021 to 2022. Inflation contributed to the increase. But there were other factors—like global disruptions to the food supply chain—that may have had a greater impact.” 

Related

How my dad’s sugary East Baltimore spaghetti made me want to abolish the pasta shape

When it comes to grocery shopping, I must admit that I am a 40-year-old infant. I wish I were joking, but my wife literally fills the cart with everything we need for the house and then sends me the link with the caption, “Hey babe, add the snacks you want!” accompanied by a smiley face. And just like a child, I smile at the smiley face before adding popcorn and cookies and chocolate-covered pretzels and grapes and always more eggs before confirming the order. 

The bill always hovers around $200 bucks, and we are slow eaters, so the food lasts. 

How did I buy groceries before my wife? That’s easy — I didn’t. Well, I would buy cereal and bottled water. Like a lot of bottled water. Think of December 31, 1999, when everyone thought the world was going to end so we bought up all the bottled water, as if Aquafina or Deer Park could save us. 

“Why is your refrigerator so empty?” friends would ask. “And what’s up with all the water?”  

But last week when my wife sent the link to the cart, after I added all of my snacks I noticed the bill was close to $400. 

I panicked, scouring the list to see if she made mistakes by adding things twice or did something wild like ordering 10 ounces of caviar. She didn’t. The cost of food has simply risen. The GAO’s Steve Morris said, “Prices are expected to grow more slowly in 2023 than they did in 2022. But it’s still going to grow more than the historic annual average of 2%. When you look at the forecast for this year’s prices, they’re predicted to increase anywhere from 5 to 10%, and probably settle around 8%. So, they’re still going to be really high.”

So in response to this crisis, I’m making it my duty to aid you in cutting costs by recommending 11 unnecessarily costly and outdated dishes that could be immediately removed from menus across the country — starting with mine and yours.

01
Baked chicken
The dumbest thing you can do to a beautiful chicken is to bake it. Baked chicken, yawn, is just so boring, yawn, and I don’t care how juicy it comes out yawn after your TikTok recipe, yawn, yawn, yawn. If you are not frying or grilling the chicken, stop buying it. Drumsticks can go, too, as the drumstick is the worst part of the bird, and I’d argue that it shouldn’t even be edible. Honestly, even frying can’t save drumsticks.
02
Casserole
As an African American man who has spent most of his life around a majority of African American people, I must honestly say that I do not know what casserole is. Like, I know, but I don’t really know. On more than one occasion, I asked a white person what casserole is, and they’ve all responded, “Oh, you just throw a whole bunch of stuff in a pan, sprinkle cheese on top and then bake it.” I think that is horrible, and if we ever truly want to experience unity, then throwing a bunch of cheese on top of something before baking it must stop now.
03
Chili
Chili is one the most overrated dishes of all dishes. I’ve had chili from cheap spots and expensive spots. Chili made by people from Chile (true story), chili made in cook-offs by people arguing over who had the best recipe, and chili that a person said I was going to love because they prepared it in a slow cooker for an extended amount of time. I think I even had chili from a person who specialized in nothing but making chili. It is always terrible.

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04
Salmon

Nobody really likes salmon. Think about it: Society has tricked us into thinking we love this bland, useless fish, always marketed as the key to happiness and being eternally fit. I’ve been eating salmon forever and have never been fit; it’s a lie. And since we are on the topic of salmon, I think it’s time for us to admit that farm-raised — which is gross — tastes way better than wild, which is also gross but is supposed to be healthier. You can keep it all. 

05
Spaghetti noodles

Spaghetti noodles have the worst shape and are horrible. If you are craving pasta and a meat sauce, just buy bowtie. 

06
Beef Wellington and London Broil

I’m going to place Beef Wellington and London Broil together because, well, what the hell is a Beef Wellington and London Broil? I feel like they should have expired from our existence around the time that Michael J. Fox TV show “Family Ties” was canceled. Something about the names of those dishes also sounds oppressive, like I never had a positive exchange with someone with the name Wellington. I know those dishes are classics to many, but some things just need to go, like student debt, income tax, MC Hammer pants and cars that run on gasoline. 

07
Liver
You never told a friend, “Hey, go to that big restaurant on Main Street, and please try the liver.” 
08
Diet foods

By diet food, I mean crap like rice cakes, seaweed chips and Special K. There’s nothing more gross than a rice cake. Rice is not meant to be consumed as a cake. You can’t even put icing on it. How is it a cake if you can’t even put icing on it? Discussing seaweed chips triggers me. Since I’m committed to honesty, though, I should say that I do like Special K (regular Special K, not those goofy remixed Honey-Nut or Strawberry versions). The problem is that the cereal is not filling, so it is not doing its job, which makes it worthless. 

09
Frozen pizza
Frozen pizza, even DiGiorno, has historically been disgusting. It should not be in your cart or freezer, even if you get it for free.
10
Crunchy taco shells 
I’m putting crunchy taco shells on the list because they are disrespectful and equally juvenile. Plus, they sever in two, exposing all of the innards after you take the first bite. Why spend so much time making something into a taco just to end up eating it like a salad? 
11
Chicken and waffles
Let’s abolish chicken and waffles, too. I love the Southern dish, but mainstream society has ruined it, similar to how corporate America destroyed hip-hop.

Removing these items from your menus may not make your trips to the market much cheaper because you will have to replace them with something. However, it will guarantee that you will have a better dining experience because it is 2023, and every item listed is dated, goofy or both. Bon appetit!

Read more

from this author

God, money and Dairy Queen: How Texas House investigators secured the impeachment of AG Ken Paxton

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A nefarious kitchen remodel and an extramarital affair. Alleged corruption and threats. God, money and Dairy Queen.

Those were among the many details of now-suspended Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s alleged misconduct that were aired on the floor of the Texas House on Saturday ahead of a historic vote to impeach the state government’s top lawyer.

Paxton had faced few political consequences for years for his many public scandals. Allegations against him included taking bribes from a real estate investor, trying to protect that same investor from legal action, abusing the powers of the office and firing staff members who reported his misconduct.

But after Paxton’s office asked lawmakers to use taxpayer dollars to pay a $3.3 million settlement to the whistleblowing staffers, the scandals proved too much for the Donald Trump-backed attorney general to shake off.

“No one person should be above the law,” state Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, a member of the House Committee on General Investigating, told his House colleagues on Saturday.

“We should not ignore it and pretend it didn’t happen,” he said. “Texas is better than that.”

The impeachment charges centered on Paxton’s entanglement with Nate Paul, an Austin real estate investor whose relationship with Paxton as a friend and political donor had caused several of his staff members to report him to federal authorities and prompted an FBI investigation — which Paxton allegedly refused to help law enforcement with. Paul was fined more than $180,000 and ordered to serve jail time by a state judge after he was found in contempt of court earlier this year.

“All roads lead to Nate Paul,” state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat and vice chair of the investigating committee, told the chamber before outlining Paxton’s yearslong relationship with his friend.

Members of the House committee that investigated Paxton said they believed he broke the law by using the agency to serve the interests of Paul, from whom he allegedly took bribes — including when the real estate developer was sued for fraud.

Eight top deputies from Paxton’s office reported him to federal authorities almost three years ago, alleging he had misused his authority to help Paul with a fraud lawsuit from the Austin nonprofit Roy F. & Joann Cole Mitte Foundation.

Spiller said Saturday that Paxton demonstrated an intense desire to help his friend with the lawsuit against the advice of his deputy attorney general. In return, Paxton allegedly received bribes and favors from Paul — from home remodeling to hiring a woman with whom Paxton had an affair.

In one now-infamous story, Paxton allegedly accepted $20,000 worth of countertop materials from Paul through contractors renovating his home in Austin.

Johnson said they learned of the story after talking to a “young man” who worked at the AG’s office. The employee, Johnson said, once observed Paxton and a contractor discussing a remodel. During the exchange, Johnson said, the contractor said he needed to “talk to Nate” before proceeding with a change to the kitchen countertops.

“This young man is disturbed” by the interaction, Johnson said as she retold the story. “In fact, he is crushed by it. He believes Ken Paxton is one of his heroes.”

The employee eventually turned down a promotion and then quit the office. But he allegedly continued to receive money from Paxton’s campaign for a few months after, Johnson said, implying that the monthly $250 checks were Paxton’s attempt to keep the young man quiet. She said the former staffer called the campaign to tell them to stop sending the money and sent it back.

Earlier in the week, a Paxton aide tried to cast doubt on the investigation by disputing the materials of the countertops involved in the home remodel. Paxton and his supporters also attempted to undermine the report by claiming that the allegations were largely made by “political” appointees — an assertion that House committee members swiftly shot down Saturday.

Committee members also claimed that Paul helped Paxton maintain his affair with a San Antonio woman by giving her a job at Paul’s company in Austin. It made her “more convenient” to Paxton, Johnson said.

Johnson claimed that a distraught Paxton once bemoaned his continued love for the woman he was having an affair with to his staff, who were gravely concerned that it was improper and could open the attorney general’s office to blackmail. Exposure of the affair, Johnson said, would have risked Paxton’s reputation as a “Christian man” who cherishes “family values” with his political base.

“He has an interest in attempting to keep this affair quiet,” Johnson said. “He also has an interest in continuing it.”

The attorney general’s wife, Angela Paxton, is a state senator. She learned of the affair four years ago, causing the couple to go on a brief break, according to testimony from the lead counsel for the investigating committee, Erin Epley.

“The affair is important because it goes to Ken Paxton’s political strength,” Johnson said. “In fact, when the affair comes out, there are a couple people in the office who say, ‘I can’t work for you.'”

In another shocking claim from the investigating committee, state Rep. Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, said that less than an hour after the committee report recommending impeachment was released on Wednesday, Paxton began calling House members attempting to intimidate them into voting against impeachment.

“I would like to point out that several members of this House, while on the floor of this House, doing the state business, received telephone calls from [Attorney] General Paxton personally, threatening them with political consequences in their next election,” Geren said.

And then there was the divinely inspired donation at a local Dairy Queen.

While Paxton was serving in the Texas Legislature as a state representative a decade ago, he became affiliated with the CEO of Servergy, a McKinney-based software company that courted him as a partner. William Mapp, the firm’s founder and former CEO, had donated to Paxton’s campaign and the two decided to go into business together.

At a Dairy Queen, the CEO reportedly said that “God had directed him” to give Paxton 100,000 shares of company stock, which Paxton argued shows the stock was a gift.

“However, documents … indicate that the stock was, again, for services,” the House Committee’s report said.

The Servergy relationship became the subject of a felony securities fraud indictment in 2015 that accused Paxton of recruiting investors without disclosing his own investment in the company or attempting to confirm the company’s claims about its technology.

According to the SEC, he persuaded five people to invest $840,000 into the company. The case is still ongoing.

The House committee’s members said they began probing Paxton’s behavior after the attorney general requested $3.3 million from the state to settle a lawsuit with the whistleblowers fired from his office after they accused Paxton of accepting bribes and other misconduct.

“There was no investigation prior to this time,” Geren, one of the committee’s five members, said on the House floor Saturday.

The settlement served Paxton by avoiding a trial that may have exposed to the public even more details of the attorney general’s wrongdoing, Geren said.

“Most disturbingly, the settlement agreement was made without prior approval of funds and obligates the Texas taxpayers — not [Attorney] General Paxton — to pay $3.3 million for his actions,” Geren told his House colleagues.

The long list of accusations against the attorney general were outlined as part of 20 charges of impeachment that the Texas House voted for Saturday — an unprecedented move that rocked the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature. The articles of impeachment include disregard of official duty, misapplication of public resources and obstruction of justice.

State Rep. Andrew Murr, R-Junction, the committee’s chair, said that a team of investigators that included experienced state and federal prosecutors and law enforcement personnel led the investigation, which the committee summarized.

Hours before a stunning 121-23 vote to impeach the attorney general, Johnson impassionately called on lawmakers to act. “God help us” if they didn’t, she said.

“If millions of Texans can’t trust us to do the right thing, right here, right now, then what are we here for?”

Stories like the one you just read come to life at The Texas Tribune Festival, the Tribune’s annual celebration of big, bold ideas happening Sept. 21-23 in downtown Austin. For just a little bit longer you can grab a discounted ticket to this year’s event, but act fast — savings end on May 31! Buy now and save.

This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2023/05/28/texas-legislature-paxton-impeachment-charges/.

The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

Chow mein and chips: a brief history of the British Chinese takeaway

“I’ve never been so disgusted in my life.” Such was one Twitter user’s response to a recent video showcasing the spoils of a British Chinese takeaway order. “British Chinese” was trending on social media as American users analyzed and criticized the cuisine, apparently bewildered by the “inauthentic” inclusion of chips or thick curry sauce.

British consumers and producers of Chinese food alike proudly showcased their takeaways in retaliation. Posters on either side of the debate sought to deem their version of Chinese food “authentic” or “traditional”, revealing the powerful connotations of these two words and their connection to culinary identity.

There is no hard definition for what makes food authentic or traditional. Instead, food goes through a process of authentication. A dish once considered novel or adaptive can form a strong identity over time, eventually becoming traditional in its own right.

Chinese food is a perfect example of this. It has always been produced in ways that blur both national boundaries and the borders between ethnic cuisines.

The history of Chinese food both in China and around the world serves as a rich record of trade, migration and colonialism. Many citizens of former British colonies such as Malaysia and Hong Kong who migrated to the UK started working in the food sector. From the 1950s onwards, they began renting vacant fish and chip shops in small towns and villages.

In rural areas, these businesses were often one of few takeaway options available.  Using the facilities on hand, they added a variety of dishes to their menu to cater to those more used to fish and chips fare.

Roux-like curry sauces were included in Chinese takeaways for many of the same reasons. Indo-Pakistani inspired curries from another colonial migratory flow were the other major source of “non-British” takeaway foods at the time.

Stand-up comedian Pierre Novellie defines British cuisine with one word — “wet”. There’s truth to his observation. It’s amazing how migrants have adapted and shaped the British love of thick sauces and no-fuss takeaways to suit their own businesses.

 

Chinese takeaways around the world

In Australia, Chinese takeaways date back to the 1850s, when Chinese cookhouses and greengrocers provided for gold miners in remote parts of the country. Today, it’s common for  Australians to joke that a town is not a town without a pub and a Chinese takeaway (often being the same establishment).

As Jan O’Connell, author of A Timeline of Australian Food notes, Australian Chinese food reflects a complex history of pro- and anti-immigration policies.

Cantonese-inspired “sizzling honey prawns” and chunky Australian variations of “Mongolian beef” are considered staples of the modern Aussie diet. Where British Chinese food is brown and gravy laden, Australian varieties favor sweet flavors and bright colors.

Legacies of colonialism have shaped other Asian cuisines, too. Japanese dishes that have become popular in the US, UK and Australia — such as ramen noodles and gyoza dumplings — are a product of the movements of people, foodstuffs and ideas across national borders.

In Slurp, a history of ramen, cultural historian Barak Kushner traces how movements between China and Japan shaped the rise of ramen and gyoza.

Chinese noodle varieties — often but not always made by migrants in port cities such as Yokohama — popularized the consumption of wheat-based noodles in Japan. The terms “ramen” and “gyoza” sound very much like the Japanese pronunciation of the northern Chinese foods lamian and jiaozi, although Kushner disputes the direct connection between the two terms.

After the second world war, many Japanese soldiers and farmers that had been stationed in occupied China returned home. There, some opened local Chinese restaurants with dishes inspired by their time in China.

British troops stationed in Japan as part of occupation forces in the same postwar period introduced local chefs to curry powder and roux-like sauces. Today’s popular Katsu curry sauce shares common ancestry in many ways with the British Chinese takeaway.

It’s clear from the recent social media trends around British Chinese food that the cuisine holds unique importance in different local identities. Cuisines go through stages of innovation, adaptation and localization, becoming considered authentic or traditional in the process.

The passionate defense of British Chinese food on TikTok shows how important the humble takeaway is today and the contribution of Chinese migration to British identity.

Jamie Coates, Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield and Niamh Calway, DPhil candidate, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Expert: Here’s what House Republicans got in return for pushing the US to the brink of default

House Republicans pushed the U.S. to the edge of a fiscal crisis because they wanted deep cuts in government spending.

So, based on the tentative deal announced on May 27, 2023, how did they do?

In broad strokes, the deal would suspend the debt limit until January 2025, freeze nondefense discretionary funding at current levels and make a few additional cuts and policy changes designed to appeal to enough Republicans and Democrats to get it through Congress. The deal also included incentives to motivate lawmakers to pass a budget on time in four months.

That provision and the 2025 expiration date should mean the U.S. should avoid a self-inflicted fiscal crisis – including an unprecedented default – until at least after the next presidential election.

No one got everything they wanted. President Joe Biden didn’t get the clean debt ceiling increase he had insisted on for months. Republicans didn’t get most of what they sought in a bill they passed in April – though they did get some of it.

As a professor of public policy and former deputy director at the Congressional Budget Office, I believe the deal, which still needs to pass both houses of Congress by June 5 to avoid a default, does hardly anything to address America’s long-term debt problem, which to me shows why a debt ceiling standoff is not the right way to solve it.

Let’s take a closer look at what I would consider the five main components of the deal to see what they’ll accomplish.

1. Expanded work requirements for SNAP

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has been a Republican target for a while.

Under current law, an individual must work or be in training for 80 hours per month if they receive SNAP food benefits in three or more out of 36 months, is able-bodied, does not live with dependent children and is under 50 years old. This entitlement program is 100% funded by the federal government but is administered by states, which have the ability to waive the requirements in some low unemployment areas.

The new deal would expand the definition to people up to age 54 and limit some of the state waiver authority. It would exclude veterans and homeless people from the tougher work requirements and expire in 2030.

The Congressional Budget Office had estimated that a similar provision in the House bill – based on extending the age requirement to 55 – would kick 275,000 people off the SNAP roles and save US$11 billion over a decade.

Since states would have to expand their work reporting systems, their increased costs would offset some of the federal savings.

The bill also contains some additional work requirements for welfare recipients for the temporary assistance for needy families program, but the changes are relatively minor.

2. Cap on nondefense discretionary spending

The main way the agreement would restrict federal spending is through the temporary cap on nondefense discretionary spending.

Spending on everything other than defense, entitlements like Social Security and veterans benefits, would stay flat in next year’s budget relative to the 2023 amount and increase 1% the following year, with no limits after that.

But, ultimately, the caps apply to just a small share of total government spending – less than 13%. So not only is it a very minor reduction in spending, it involves a small fraction of the federal budget.

In their House bill, Republicans had sought a larger cut in discretionary spending.

Entitlement programs would be unaffected by the deal, while defense spending would grow by 3.3% next year, as Biden requested in his budget.

One item that would see actual cuts would be the $80 billion that had previously been allocated to beef up IRS enforcement of tax cheats. The deal would trim that by about $20 billion, and the savings would be used to offset cuts to other areas of discretionary spending.

Republicans had wanted to slash this by $71 billion – which, ironically, would have actually resulted in a larger budget deficit because much of that money was going to be used to beef up enforcement to collect more revenue from people who didn’t pay all the taxes they owed.

3. Streamlining energy leasing and permitting

Both Republicans and Democrats have interest in expediting the environmental review process for new energy leases, but they have very different priorities.

Republicans are more interested in gas pipelines and fossil fuel projects, while Democrats are more interested in wind, solar and other alternative energy installations. The problem for both is that the approval of environmental and technical plans is very slow and often involves all three levels of government. Also, at the federal level decisions often involve federal agencies with overlapping jurisdictions.

The new deal would make some minor changes to the environmental review process to make it go faster – though it’s less than what Republicans initially wanted.

4. COVID-19 funding clawback

White House and House Republican negotiators agreed to claw back as much as $30 billion in unspent funds from six COVID-19 programs passed by Congress. The estimate is based on the broadly similar House bill.

Some of these funds were allocated to various agencies, while others have already been distributed to states and even to local governments. The actual amount recovered will likely be less than estimated because funds continue to be spent and will take a while to recover.

5. No government shutdown

Negotiators included a provision that would ensure there isn’t another fiscal crisis when Congress must pass 12 appropriations bills by October to keep the government funded into the next fiscal year. I think this is the most important component of the deal.

It automatically funds everything at 99% of the previous year’s level if Congress fails to pass the bills in time. Besides eliminating the possibility of a shutdown over the budget, as the U.S. has experienced in the past, the 1% decrease in funding provides a strong incentive for Republicans and Democrats to negotiate a compromise that keeps their priorities fully funded.

The bottom line

The deal would limit some spending in the short run but does very little to tackle America’s long-term debt problem, which I believe urgently needs to be addressed.

The U.S. national debt has exploded, most recently as a result of trillions of dollars in spending related to the COVID-19 pandemic. At a little under $32 trillion, it’s over 120% of gross domestic product, which is considered unsustainably high and is costing well over half a trillion dollars in annual interest payments. At some point, investors may begin to see U.S. government bonds as a risky investment and stop buying, which would lead to higher borrowing costs and could bring down the entire U.S. financial system.

But using the debt ceiling as a negotiating tactic is unlikely to achieve the kinds of tough choices needed to meaningfully slow the growing mountain of U.S. debt.

About 60% of total government spending goes to fund just a few items, such as Social Security, Medicare and national defense, that are very hard, politically, to cut. And political realities make it nearly impossible to increase taxes.

But a budgeting process known as reconciliation was created specifically for this purpose because it allows Congress to cut any mandatory spending and entitlement program and increase taxes in one bill. It also can’t be filibustered in the Senate – it just needs a majority.

To truly address the debt problem, what is needed, in my view, is a balanced bipartisan proposal that includes cuts to all programs, as well as some significant tax increases. Political brinkmanship won’t get America there.

For all the debt ceiling drama and the risks of profound economic damage and global tensions that resulted from it, Republicans achieved only a two-year cap on a small fraction of the total budget. Reconciliation – and lawmakers willing to govern and compromise – is a far superior way to attain a comprehensive deficit-reduction plan.

 

Raymond Scheppach, Professor of Public Policy, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

“Significant global ecological disruption”: Plastic is destroying Earth — and recycling won’t help

Children in Western countries have long been taught the virtues of recycling. Because plastic products never decompose on their own, kids are instructed to dispose of them in specially-designated bins so they can be reused. The thinking is that if plastic products are continuously repurposed instead of being simply thrown away, it will lessen the plastic pollution crisis currently choking off life on this planet.

“Many people think that more plastic recycling will resolve the plastics crisis, but plastics are made with toxic chemicals… so recycling plastic is recycling toxic chemicals.”

Yet a new report by Greenpeace USA reveals that recycling plastic not only fails to help the problem — it may actually make things worse. More significantly, the report reviews dozens of previous studies about plastic pollution to arrive at a sobering conclusion: If humanity does not get plastic pollution under control, the entire Earth ecosystem could be placed in grave danger.

Related

How plastics are making us infertile — and could even lead to human extinction

Foremost among the report’s notable statistics: Less than 9% of global plastics even wind up getting recycled, according to the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), indicating that the programs created to encourage plastic recycling have been minimally effective. Even if they were being more widely utilized, however, they do not offset the tons of new plastic products being created every year. Finally, there is evidence that the process through which plastics are recycled may actually make them more hazardous to humans who are subsequently exposed to them.

“Plastics contain more than 13,000 chemicals, with more than 3,200 of them known to be hazardous to human health,” the report explains. “Moreover, many of the other chemicals in plastics have never been assessed and may also be toxic. Recycled plastics often contain higher levels of chemicals that can poison people and contaminate communities, including toxic flame retardants, benzene and other carcinogens, environmental pollutants like brominated and chlorinated dioxins, and numerous endocrine disruptors that can cause changes to the body’s natural hormone levels.”

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“Without dramatic reductions in plastic production and eliminating toxic chemicals from plastics, we risk a significant global ecological disruption.”

Dr. Therese Karlsson — a Science Advisor with the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN), many of whose studies are featured in the report — spoke with Salon by email about its broader implications.

“The studies show that waste workers are exposed when they collect plastics, communities near recycling facilities are exposed from air and water pollution and consumers who use recycled plastic products face toxic exposures,” Karlsson told Salon. “It’s also important to note that the science shows that recycled plastics can be even more toxic than virgin plastics. Thus, the science directly contradicts strategies to resolve the plastics crisis through more recycling.”

Karlsson pointed out that the chemicals and wastes pollution crisis is, along with the climate change crisis and the biodiversity crisis, one of the “three planetary crises” facing Earth because of human activity. “The evidence shows that we have exceeded the planetary boundaries for chemical and plastics pollution, meaning that production and emissions may be threatening the stability of the entire global ecosystem,” Karlsson explained. “Without dramatic reductions in plastic production and eliminating toxic chemicals from plastics, we risk a significant global ecological disruption.”

Recycling plastics does not solve this problem. Indeed, as the report breaks down, there are “three uncontrollable poisonous pathways of plastic recycling,” including how virgin plastics made with toxic chemicals can transfer those chemicals into the recycle products, how plastics absorb dangerous chemicals through direct contact and absorption and how when “plastics are tainted by toxins in the waste stream and the environment and are then recycled, they produce recycled plastics that contain a stew of toxic chemicals.”

“Many people think that more plastic recycling will resolve the plastics crisis, but plastics are made with toxic chemicals, and there is no magic recycling box that makes these chemicals disappear — so recycling plastic is recycling toxic chemicals,” Karlsson pointed out. “We therefore urgently need to ensure that toxic chemicals are phased out from plastics and that the overall production of plastics is decreased.”

Dr. Shanna Swan, a professor of environmental medicine and public health at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, told Salon by email that she is “in complete agreement” with the report. Swan is a pioneering researcher in the subject of plastic pollution and human health; her book “Count Down: How Our Modern World Is Threatening Sperm Counts, Altering Male and Female Reproductive Development, and Imperiling the Future of the Human Race” broke new ground in documenting plummeting human fertility rates and their likely connection to plastic pollution. In particular, Swan has studied endocrine disruptors like phthalates and bisphenols, as well as other chemicals that seem to interfere with healthy human reproductive development.

“This report is produced by Greenpeace, which is advocating for a legally binding Global Plastics Treaty which I strongly support,” Swan told Salon. The report urges that “the Global Plastics Treaty negotiations in Paris (May 29 to June 2) must focus on capping and then phasing down plastic production.”

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about plastic pollution

Experts: Report that Trump lawyer was “misled” about Mar-a-Lago search could be bad news for Trump

Former President Donald Trump’s attorney Evan Corcoran told associates that he was “waved off” from searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago office where the FBI found classified documents, suggesting he was “materially misled” by the former president’s team, according to The Guardian.

Corcoran, whose claims of attorney-client privilege were pierced earlier this year after a judge agreed with the Justice Department that it was more likely than not that Trump used his services in furtherance of a crime, told associates that several Trump aides told him to search the storage room where he found 38 classified documents, according to the report. When he asked whether he should search any other locations he was steered away.

The FBI ultimately executed a court-approved search of Mar-a-Lago months later and found 101 classified documents in Trump’s office and elsewhere. The office was “where the most highly classified documents had been located,” according to The Guardian’s Hugo Lowell.

It’s unclear who dissuaded Corcoran from searching the office or whether it was Trump himself.

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“It’s crazy in there”: Knives out on Trump’s legal team over worries one of them could be a “snitch”

Corcoran testified to the grand jury examining evidence in that case that Trump “did not personally convey that false information,” according to The New York Times. But he said that Trump also did not tell his lawyers of any other locations where the documents were stored, which may have “effectively misled the legal team,” according to the report.

“This is completely false and rooted in pure fantasy,” a Trump spokesperson told The Guardian. “The real story is the illegal weaponization of the Justice Department and their witch-hunts targeted to influence an election in order to try and prevent President Trump from returning to the White House.”

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But some legal experts expressed skepticism that the order did not come from above.

“Hard to imagine a lawyer being ‘waved off’ by anyone but the client,” tweeted former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance.

Investigators have focused on why Trump failed to comply with a subpoena for the return of the documents last year and whether Trump asked for documents to be moved out of the storage room so he could keep them.

Trump aide Walt Nauta told prosecutors that Trump personally instructed him to move boxes from the storage room before and after the subpoena was issued. Two of Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before a June 2022 visit by the FBI and even carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before he received the subpoena, The Washington Post reported last week.

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Corcoran turned the 38 classified documents he found in the storage room to the DOJ, telling investigators that “records that came from the White House were stored within one location at Mar-a-Lago, the storage room … [and] he was not advised there were any records in any private office space.”

Legal experts questioned Corcoran’s account.

“What lawyer worth their salt would have agreed to this wave off, knowing that the lawyers would be signing off on the sufficiency of the search?” tweeted national security attorney Bradley Moss.

“Question is why everyone didn’t immediately assume ALL THE REALLY CLASSIFIED DOCUMENTS MUST THEREFORE BE IN THE OFFICE,” added former FBI agent Pete Strzok.

“Seriously?” wrote conservative attorney George Conway, a frequent Trump critic. “Even if your client says he is the most honest person ever to walk the face of the Earth, and that many people, often very big, strong men, have told him this with tears in their eyes?”

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about the Mar-a-Lago probe

Biden laughs at Fox News reporter’s question about potential pardon for Trump

President Joe Biden on Sunday laughed off a reporter’s question about a potential pardon of former President Donald Trump.

Fox News reporter Peter Doocy shouted the question to Biden outside the White House as he was walking toward Marine One.

“Did you see that Ron DeSantis said that if he became president, he would pardon Trump?” Doocy asked. “Where are you on the idea of presidents pardoning Trump?”

Biden laughed at the question and waved to reporters as he started to walk toward the helicopter.

“It’s a great question. Thank you,” he turned and said.

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DeSantis did not explicitly say he would pardon Trump but he said he would review certain cases after he was repeatedly asked about the possibility during a recent radio interview.

“I would say any example of this favored treatment based on politics, or weaponization, would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big,” he said.

DeSantis also floated the possibility of pardoning January 6 Capitol rioters.

“Now, some of these cases, some people may have a technical violation of the law,” DeSantis said. “But if there are three other people who did the same thing but just in a context, like [the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020] and they don’t get prosecuted at all, that is uneven application of justice, and so … we will use the pardon power.”

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DeSantis added that he would use his pardon powers “at the front end” of his administration, noting that “a lot of people wait until the end of the administration to issue pardons.”

Trump similarly vowed to pardon rioters during a CNN town hall earlier this month.

“I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control,” he said, adding that he would likely pardon “a large portion of them” very “early on.”

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“It’s crazy in there”: Knives out on Trump’s legal team over worries one of them could be a “snitch”

Former President Donald Trump’s lawyers are “starting to turn on each other” over growing concerns that one of them could be a “snitch,” according to The Daily Beast.

Five sources with direct knowledge of the situation told the outlet that clashing personalities and the threat that they could face legal jeopardy themselves has “sown deep divisions that have only worsened in recent months.” Attorney Tim Parlatore left the team earlier this month after throwing another member of Trump’s team, Boris Ephsteyn, under the bus — but sources told the outlet his departure may only be the beginning.

“There’s a lot of lawyers and a lot of jealousy,” a member of Trump’s legal team told The Daily Beast, adding that the number of lawyers representing a single client accused of so many crimes is unprecedented.

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As special counsel Jack Smith’s team targets multiple Trump attorneys in his investigations, Trump’s lawyers “seem to be questioning whether their colleagues may actually turn into snitches,” the report added.

Smith’s team successfully pierced attorney-client privilege claims invoked by Trump attorney Evan Corcoran after arguing that the former president may have used his services to further a crime. Prosecutors interviewed Corcoran before a grand jury about topics he previously refused to discuss and obtained his notes about discussions with the former president.

Trump’s legal team has also groused about Ephsteyn, who has described himself as Trump’s in-house counsel, which sources ridiculed and compared it to how mob boss John Gotti’s lawyer described his services, according to the report.

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Ephsteyn has been accused of interfering in the president’s legal matters that are being handled by more experienced attorneys.

Parlatore’s departure earlier this month came after he and several attorneys staged an “intervention” and demanded either Ephsteyn leaves or they do.

Parlatore told CNN last week that Ephsteyn did “everything he could to try to block us, to prevent us from doing what we could to defend the president.”

“Boris pissed off all the Florida lawyers. People are dropping like flies. Everybody hates him. He’s a toxic loser. He’s a complete psycho,” a source told The Daily Beast. “He’s got daddy issues, and Trump is his daddy.”

Trump attorney Alina Habba disputed Parlatore’s claims last week.

“You have type A personalities. We’re all lawyers, and not everybody’s always going to get along,” she told CNN.

“Mr. Parlatore is no longer a member of the legal team. His statements regarding current members of the legal team are unfounded and categorically false,” Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told The Daily Beast.

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Some members of the legal team have also questioned why relatively inexperienced 33-year-old lawyer Lindsey Halligan abruptly appeared in Trump’s circle last year after defending him on Steve Bannon’s podcast.

Members of the team have “seriously questioned” why she was hired since she has little courtroom experience.

“It waters down the honor to represent a president. It really does, when you think about it,” one of Halligan’s colleagues told The Daily Beast.

Two other members of the team speculate that Trump only keeps her around because he “likes to be surrounded by attractive people,” according to the report.

Another colleague defended her anonymously.

“With a new person coming in, people are looking to undercut her. She’s a young, attractive woman, and people can be pretty sexist,” the person told The Daily Beast, adding that such speculation about her hiring was “an easy way to undercut a woman attorney.”

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Some members of Trump’s legal team also criticized attorney Joe Tacopina’s “brutish performance in court” after a Manhattan jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting and defaming E. Jean Carroll, though others also faulted Habba for failing to get better rulings from a federal judge before the trial.

“She quickly demonstrated herself to have a total lack of understanding, and he totally screwed that case up. That was a winnable case if he presented a defense,” a source told The Daily Beast.

Habba was also criticized for declaring in an unrelated case that she thoroughly searched Mar-a-Lago for documents before the FBI found dozens of classified documents at the president’s resort residence months later.

“It’s either perjury or incompetence,” a source told the outlet. 

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Members of the team worry they could be pressured to become witnesses against Trump and that their work on his defense could be radioactive to their careers.

“I have nothing to do with that. I have a law license to protect,” one of Trump’s lawyers told The Daily Beast.

Another added that they might escape before it gets worse.

“It’s crazy in there. It really is,” the person said. “I’ve heard there’s a mess coming.”

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The millennial anxieties of “Succession” and how each of the Roys tried and failed to cope

“Maybe the poison drips through.” This is what Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) tells his younger sister, Shiv (Sarah Snook) earlier this season in the now concluded HBO drama, “Succession.” This sentiment perfectly encapsulates the show drenched in anxiety that resonates with a particular demographic: millennials. 

As the generation most attuned to the 24-hour news cycle, millennials have constantly been overwhelmed with headlines, often feeling a loss of control.

Now that we have the full series to analyze, we can take a step back and see what the series has to say about millennial anxiety and the way the three main Roy siblings (sorry Conheads) grapple with it in a crumbling world.  

Executive producer and director of the final episode Mark Mylod has made it no secret that he views the show as a tragedy. So, it should be no surprise that we get a tragic finale. In the end, no Roy sibling really wins. In Shiv’s own words, “the empty f**king suit” ends up on top, i.e., her husband, Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen). Despite a hopeful reunion in their mother’s kitchen where the siblings anoint Kendall as the “king,” their shared happiness is fleeting. It’s the moment the siblings return to the corporate space of Waystar Royco and enter the “real world” again that the stitches come off – figuratively and literally. 

“It was perfectly painful,” Mylod said in the behind-the-scenes “Inside the Episode.” 

Indeed, it was, and the tragedy of the siblings is showcased in the rousing and emotionally stressful finale which sees each Roy’s arc collide and diverge with agonizing tension. That brings us back to the show’s central thesis, which seems particularly relevant to the millennial generation: What are we to do? What can we do to avoid tragedy in our own lives? 

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There is tremendous irony in the Roy siblings being surrounded by a news conglomerate like Waystar, given they have the power not only to disseminate the news, but make it. Millennials have lived through countless global tragedies – from 9/11 and everyday school shootings to the financial crisis and COVID – and unlike prior generations, have had an unprecedented sense of immediacy to the world around them. From access to the top breaking news story to the latest natural disaster or the most recent update on climate change, viruses, act of violence and bigotry, it’s always been at our fingertips. We may not have GoJo or Vaulter, but we do have Twitter and Meta, which like “Succession’s” fictitious counterparts, have been embroiled in their own controversy over leadership and misinformation. 

As the generation most attuned to the 24-hour news cycle, millennials have constantly been overwhelmed with headlines, often feeling a loss of control due to the inordinate influence of past generations like the boomer generation. Which, in “Succession,” is the four-season long battle between the Roy siblings and their boomer father, Logan. 

Jeremy Strong in “Succession” (HBO)The paths for dealing with these stressors are laid bare, and the results of such paths are also summed up in the finale. In each sibling’s case, we see how they attempt to surpass previous generations, and what the outcomes of their decisions are.

In Kendall’s case, he chooses to follow the path already made by past generations and become the person he most detests in order to succeed. In the second season episode “This Is Not for Tears,” Logan makes it clear to Kendall, “You have to be a killer,” not believing that his son has the rough, Machiavellian streak necessary to lead Waystar. Ironic given that viewers have witnessed Kendall commit vehicular manslaughter and lie about it. But Kendall hears the advice and throughout the third season decides to embrace the killer within, targeting his father and Waystar with explosive testimony and calling out the past generations’ bullying leadership style and apathy towards sexual misconduct allegations. There’s semblances to exploiting the #MeToo movement in what Kendall does, but he attempts to utilize the controversies sparked by his father’s generation to bolster his own standing, only to then do exactly as his father had done but with less conviction, which results in Kendall alienating everyone in his life.

For Roman, we see a man who collapses into political and ideological extremism. We’ve had recent examples of young, white men embracing radicalized beliefs often as a means to either boost their own sense of self (no surprise that Roman gloats about having the presumptive, ideologically far-right president calling him) or to find a group of people to look down on and target in order to feel better about themselves. Roman grew up in an abusive household and instead of turning to help others through their own trauma, uses his own past as a weapon against others, drawn into doing this by ideologues and his own self-interest. 

Sarah Snook in “Succession” (HBO)And then we have Shiv, who betrays her political and ideological morals for a modicum of success by proxy. Shiv has had a long history of playing both sides. At the start of “Succession” she is won over to work for a liberal presidential candidate who wants to target the Roy family business. That is, until she gets a better deal to come into Waystar. In the final season, Shiv discovers she’s pregnant and within days of finding this out, she utilizes her pregnancy not only as a means to elevate the “clumsy interloper” Tom to the top, but also commits to being an absentee mother, nullifying the perceived risks of motherhood and dooming her child to a potentially “emotionally stunted” upbringing like the one she experienced. Prior to her own pregnancy, Shiv expressed little interest in having children, a growing sentiment among millennials, but the allure of using this to her advantage and to become a Lady Macbeth-type figure – “Macbeth” being directly referenced in the finale – is too much to resist.

This brings us back to the primary question: What can we millennials do? If we are to avoid the tragedies experienced by the Roys — ensconced in the world of news, breaking notifications and a crumbling world perpetuated by the scions of the past — we cannot sink. Each of the siblings in their own ways sank in order to rise. It did not work for any of them. Sure, Shiv may have some “power” through Tom as the American CEO, but at what cost? Her lifelong unhappiness with a man who has betrayed her countless times and whom she had never truly loved? Meanwhile Kendall has become, in every sense of the word, purposeless now that the competition has finished and he has lost. 

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“I don’t think he (Logan) wanted to give it to any of us,” Roman says in the finale. Which is probably true as the entire impetus of the show is Logan deciding he will stay on as CEO for five, maybe 10 more years. All to stop the rise of a new generation. But then, what is that new generation meant to do instead? The seemingly diabolical path is the most appealing, but it will assuredly result in tragedy. 

Kieran Culkin in “Succession” (HBO)There have been plenty of connections between “Succession” and other tragedies like “King Lear” and “Oedipus Rex,” but few have compared the show with another tragedy of sorts: Faust. Originally a German legend, the story became more popularized thanks to Christopher Marlow’s “Doctor Faustus” in which the titular doctor signs a contract with the demon Mephistopheles, a servant of Lucifer’s, to extend his life so he can learn more about magic. As evidenced by not only the finale, but also Logan’s death in “Connor’s Wedding,” we have seen that no matter the price one pays for extending their time on earth, no matter the sacrifices one makes on their quest for knowledge or power, our time will eventually come. It’s just a matter of whether we’re willing to sign a contract with the devil for just a bit more time. Therein lies the anxiety so many of us face and what the Roy siblings had to decide: to sign the contract or not. 

So if “Succession” teaches us one thing as a generation of amplified anxiety, it’s this: don’t sign the f**king contract.

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about “Succession”

Small, rural communities have become abortion access battlegrounds

WEST WENDOVER, Nev. — In April, Mark Lee Dickson arrived in this 4,500-person city that hugs the Utah-Nevada border to pitch an ordinance banning abortion.

Dickson is the director of the anti-abortion group Right to Life of East Texas and founder of another organization that has spent the past few years traveling the United States trying to persuade local governments to pass abortion bans.

“Sixty-five cities and two counties across the United States” have passed similar restrictions, he told members of the West Wendover City Council during a mid-April meeting. The majority are in Texas, but recent successes in other states have buoyed Dickson and his group.

“We’re doing this in Virginia and Illinois and Montana and other places as well,” he said.

The quest to enact local bans has become particularly acute in small towns, like West Wendover and Hobbs, New Mexico, which are situated by borders between states that have restricted abortion and states where laws preserve access. They are crossroads where abortion advocates and providers have looked to establish clinics to serve people traveling from the large swaths of the U.S. where states have banned or severely restricted abortions after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned nearly 50-year-old nationwide abortion protections established by the court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.

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Residents and leaders in West Wendover and many other towns and cities are grappling with the arrival of outside advocates, including Dickson, who now claim a stake in the governance of their small and otherwise quiet communities.

Dickson’s proposal to the West Wendover City Council came after council members voted against issuing a building permit to California-based Planned Parenthood Mar Monte in March. Officials from the Planned Parenthood affiliate told the local board the facility would offer primary care services in addition to abortion and other reproductive care. The vote followed hours of heated debate during public comment. Then, Mayor Jasie Holm vetoed the council’s decision, leaving the request for the permit in limbo.

Located in northeastern Nevada, West Wendover is more than 100 miles by car from Elko, the county seat, 120 miles west from Salt Lake City, and 170 miles south from Twin Falls, Idaho. The city has been a strategic location for casinos and a marijuana dispensary, which are legal in Nevada but restricted in Utah and Idaho. Similarly, its proximity to states that moved to restrict abortion access following the Dobbs decision overturning Roe has put a spotlight on the city.

Dickson’s anti-abortion proposal has drawn support from the town’s more conservative residents. But brothers Fernando and Marcos Cerros have challenged the anti-abortion efforts. In addition to wanting to protect and expand access to abortion, they both saw the primary care clinic that Planned Parenthood Mar Monte was seeking to establish as a potential victory in their rural community, which is designated a medically underserved area by the federal Health Resources and Services Administration.

Fernando Cerros, 22, said Planned Parenthood offered a solution to the area’s health care shortage “on a silver platter.”

“And it was denied. I need to do what I can do to get it here,” he said.

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The Cerros brothers have tried to organize a group to support abortion access and establish the Planned Parenthood clinic in West Wendover, but have found it difficult to sustain. They said they feel outnumbered by residents who support Dickson. Marcos Cerros, 18, said he attends Catholic Mass every Sunday in West Wendover and that parishioners there are regularly exposed to inflammatory anti-abortion language.

Abortion up to 24 weeks is protected in Nevada law, and the state legislature recently approved a bill to enshrine the law in the state constitution. To become law, the measure will need to pass once more during Nevada’s next legislative session, in 2025, and be approved by voters in 2026.

Last year, following the Dobbs decision, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak, a Democrat, issued an executive order similar to ones in other states protecting patients who seek abortion care from facing prosecution by states where it is not legal.

The quest to enact local bans has become particularly acute in small towns situated by borders between states that have restricted abortion and states where laws preserve access

Across Nevada’s eastern border, in Utah, abortion is legal up to 18 weeks while challenges to a trigger ban and a move to clamp down on abortion clinic licensure continue through the courts.

Idaho’s laws against abortion are among the most restrictive in the country. Currently, the state allows abortion only in certain cases of rape and incest or to save the mother’s life. In April, the state made headlines after lawmakers there passed an “abortion trafficking” law that criminalizes helping minors cross state borders to receive an abortion or obtain abortion pills without parental consent.

Extreme variations in abortion policy from state to state are the new normal, and local challenges are “what we’re in for,” said Rachel Rebouché, dean of the Beasley School of Law at Temple University and co-author of a recent research paper examining the post-Dobbs legal reality. “The theaters of conflict are multiplying, and this is the complex legal landscape that we live in.”

Dickson’s strategy in creating what he calls “sanctuary cities for the unborn” involves invoking a 150-year-old federal law that restricts the mailing of abortion pills. But Dickson argues the law goes further, banning any “paraphernalia,” including anything that could be used to perform an abortion, such as certain medical devices and tools.

Federal officials contend that although the abortion provision in the law has not been amended, previous court decisions have limited the reach of the Comstock Act. The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion in December concluding that the law does not prohibit the mailing of abortion medication.

Dickson argues that the Comstock Act should supersede any state law or state constitutional protection. Rebouché said she’s unsure how it will shake out in the courts.

“There’s a number of jumps a court would have to take, the most significant of which would be that Comstock is still good law and it preempts abortion law,” she said. “That’s a controversial holding because Comstock has not been enforced or applied for decades.”

A spokesperson for Planned Parenthood Mar Monte declined to comment on whether the organization would continue to pursue the clinic in West Wendover, citing legal issues.

Dickson’s proposal now sits in the hands of the West Wendover City Council. He assured local leaders that, should they proceed with implementing the ordinance, his attorney will represent them at no cost. That attorney, Jonathan Mitchell, is a former solicitor general of Texas and is credited with helping shape the law that allows civil lawsuits against people and providers “aiding and abetting” pregnant women terminating a pregnancy.

An anti-abortion ordinance was walked back in at least one Ohio city, and other local bodies have voted against such ordinances or chosen not to put them to a vote, according to Dickson’s website.

Andrea Miller, president of the National Institute for Reproductive Health, said there’s an irony in Dickson’s multistate effort to stop people from crossing state lines for reproductive health care, including abortion.

“It would be laughable if it were not so tragic,” Miller said. “It’s an incredibly cynical, politically motivated effort largely aimed at sowing confusion and stigmatizing abortion care.”

Miller also pointed to other municipalities in the U.S. — urban centers like New York, Seattle, Philadelphia, and more — that have approved local ordinances protecting and expanding access to abortion care.

“There’s a big divide between people who think you’re killing babies versus people who think pregnancy is not black and white.”

The West Wendover city manager, mayor, or council members would need to request that consideration of the proposal be added to a meeting agenda for it to move forward. Holm, the mayor, said she would not include the ordinance for consideration “at any time.” City Council member Gabriela Soriano, the only woman on the council, said in late April that she was unsure whether other council members would pursue the ordinance.

Holm said she was unaware of any outreach to the city from Planned Parenthood Mar Monte about moving forward with the clinic.

If the anti-abortion ordinance in West Wendover were instituted and prevented the opening of a clinic in the city, it would have far-reaching implications for residents. Currently, they face more than an hour drive in either direction to the nearest hospital.

For some community members, the decision isn’t so clear-cut.

The Cerros brothers said their mother, who is Catholic and Hispanic, is against abortion but in support of the Planned Parenthood clinic opening in West Wendover. Years ago, she had a miscarriage after driving an hour and a half to Salt Lake City for emergency care.

“There’s a big divide between people who think you’re killing babies versus people who think pregnancy is not black and white. Things come up,” Fernando Cerros said. “Sometimes you need emergency care. And a clinic like that would help.”

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From “holy hype” to AI sentience, tech has a history of inflating its potential

I’ll admit it. In the first couple days after using ChatGPT, the advanced chatbot from OpenAI, I felt the same way I did when I first downloaded the Mosaic Web Browser in the early ’90s. The earth seemed like it had shifted below my feet. I write about the history of technology, so you’d think I’d have the intellectual armor to keep such dramatic feelings in check. But I didn’t. I felt genuinely awed.  

In the subsequent months, I’ve had chances to recalibrate those feelings in light of other people’s reactions. Some, with a utopian bent, speak of ChatGPT fueling an economic boom that increases intellectual productivity multifold. Others, who have been described as “doomers,” trot out visions of robot apocalypse. Doom talk, in one of its more curious, and perhaps corrosive forms, can generate “wishful worries,” as the historian David Brock has suggested. People who engage in wishful worrying would rather fantasize about some future injustice that AI might cause rather than focus on its present-day harms. Some have even created “The AI Hype Wall of Shame” to critique pundits who dramatize and mystify A.I. overmuch.

Making sense of those reactions and assessing my own sentiments in light of them, is a challenge. To what extent did my awe need to be tempered? In feeling awe, was I also mystifying the technology? Beyond taking into account the advice of present-day boosters, doomers and critics, it’s also worth considering how past Americans have framed their responses to what seemed initially like awesome technologies, and whether those reactions might also cast some light on our current encounters. 

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An obvious place to begin is “The Turk,” which was a chess playing automaton. Originally constructed in Europe in 1770, it was brought over to America in 1826. “The Turk” was a chess board which was placed next to a clothed manikin. The manikin and the board, in turn rested on a wooden box that contained gears and other machinery. To the unwitting observer, and even to many who examined it closely, the machinery appeared to be able to play chess. In actuality however, there was an expert chess player hidden inside the box who wielded the chess pieces by moving the manikin’s arms. 

As Tom Standage has argued in his book The Turk, the public’s reaction to the automaton in 1820s “foreshadowed” our own reaction to modern digital automatons. Some people were awed by the technology and were willing (at least for a moment) to imagine it as intelligent and possessed of self-agency, while others sought to demystify it and point out the real hidden human labor that was driving it.

With the wisdom of hindsight, we can say that the American public in the 1820s was gullible. After all, machines that could play decent games of chess did not appear until the antecedents of IBM’s Deep Blue in the late 20th century. At the same time, that hindsight doesn’t discourage everyone from thinking that our own time is special — some of us are still inclined to believe (if only momentarily) that now we’re witnessing the birth of some real form of machine intelligence.

The lesson of “The Turk” cautions otherwise: we might like to attribute some sort of autonomy and intelligence to machines, but if we can look into the black box, what is revealed are the labors, and interests, of human actors. If our initial encounters with technology provoke feelings of mystery and awe, we might not want to take those feelings at face value. They might be concealing as much as they reveal.

When Samuel Morse inaugurated the first telegraph line, the message he famously tapped out implicitly asked a question: “What hath God wrought.”  

And if going back to the 1820s seems like too much of a stretch, we should remember that there are more recent precedents. When Steve Jobs was hyping the MacIntosh in 1984, he aspired (as he put it) “to reach the point where the operating system is totally transparent…you never [should have to] interact with it; you don’t know about it.” 

For Jobs, the interface should be so magical and user friendly that consumers wouldn’t have to consider how it actually generated what it generated. As Jobs famously said later, “It just works.” Never mind the workforce that labored in the background to make it work — the magic covered all of that up. I don’t know if Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, has ever explicitly ascribed to this design philosophy, but if you play with ChatGPT’s prompts for any length of time you can see that philosophy implicitly built into the way it interfaces with you.

Other events in the past can also enlarge our understanding of the often awed reactions to ChatGPT and its surrounding hype. For example, when Samuel Morse inaugurated the first telegraph line in America (which stretched between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore), the message he famously tapped out implicitly asked a question (even though it lacked a question mark): “What hath God wrought.”  

That message might simply be read as the product of an age that was, in some ways, less secularized than our own. And since Morse was the son of a Congregationalist minister, it seems, on one level, unsurprising that he’d use divine rhetoric. But Morse, of course, also stood to profit from the adoption of his invention. Dramatizing it as God’s creation surely served that end. Other investors in the telegraph like Congressman Francis O. J. Smith used similar language. For Smith, the telegraph was worthy of “religious reverence.” It had “almost super human agency” and was “unsurpassed” in its “moral grandeur.”

Hype — in this case 19th century holy hype — occludes the way the technology serves as a tool of imperialism and oppression. 

Using religious language to hype technology may have revealed something important about human limits, or put another way, what powers should belong to humans and which ones to gods. But the language didn’t go very far in anticipating the more immediately problematic aspects of telegraphy, including the way it hastened the spread of misinformation, information overload, and many forms of imperialism. Some of this is exemplified in John Gast’s painting American Progress. In high school history classes this painting, is often used as a way of pictorially representing “manifest destiny,” since it shows American settlers moving west. But it also depicts something more. 

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At the center of the painting is a deity trailing a telegraph wire.  She too moves from east to west across the American landscape.  At first gloss, the painting seems to echo Morse’s and Smith’s hype — God, in concert with humans, uses the telegraph to spread progress and enlightenment across the world. But after a second, more discerning look, one sees that the deification of technology distracts attention from seeing what Gast has painted on the left (westernmost) margins — namely the displacement of Native Americans as the telegraph and settlers move ever westward.  Hype — in this case 19th century holy hype — occludes the way the technology serves as a tool of imperialism and oppression.

Similar systems of occlusion and erasure are at work 150 years later in the current hype around AI. But instead of deifying technology (although there is still some of that), it’s done by imagining A.I as autonomous, as sentient, with its own ends and its own deterministic imperatives that no one (especially those of us in academia) has the power to stop. When framed this way, the commercial ends of OpenAI and of Microsoft (which has a multi-billion dollar stake in the product) are obscured and left unquestioned. Reified in this manner, the goals appear to be in the AI — not in the people who profit from the AI or from the labors of billions of writers whose writing is used to train the AI. Erasure, as it were, happens at multiple levels. It’s “The Turk” writ large.

If the above are not reasons enough for resisting the hype, one might also consider that Americans have been speaking reverently about emerging technologies for centuries. That hype might catalyze awe and fear, and feelings of what the historian David Nye called “the technological sublime,”  but the feelings contain within themselves their “own rapid obsolescence.” They have “half-lives.” And probably shorter half-lives than the sublimity past generations found in the technologies of their own day. Next year, by this time, ChatGPT might just feel ordinary, mundane, or as Neil Postman once put it, just “part of the natural order of things.”

So it seems like good counsel to be wise to the hype.  Not only does it conceal as much as it reveals, if history is any guide, it’s likely to be ephemeral. 

Americans have been speaking reverently about emerging technologies for centuries

This isn’t to say however, that in guarding against hype we have to question everyone who writes inflated or extravagant stories about the power of technology or its capacity to appear autonomous. In appropriate circumstances, those stories, and the emotions they provoke, can illuminate aspects of social and political life that otherwise are left unexplored. 

After all, humans have been fashioning dramatic accounts of their tools and how those tools reconfigure their sense of limits and agency for millennia. If we look backwards in time from the recent past to the distant past the pattern is evident. Here are just a few of the many instances that give definition to this pattern: In the movies Ex Machina and HER, humans fall in love with AIs, but they outsmart the humans and abandon them. In the 1936 film Modern Times, Charlie Chaplin is swallowed up and turned into a machine by an assembly line. In countless Hollywood remakes and in Mary Shelly’s original book, Victor Frankenstein is sometimes read as someone who has engaged in Promethean overreach and other times as someone who loses control because he neglects to nurture his creation. And the Greeks used dramatic mythical figures like Pandora, Icarus and Prometheus to broach the fraught relationships they had with their own technologies.

Those stories aren’t meant to be taken literally. Instead they are metaphors that help express the limits of human freedom and how technology may (or may not) reshape that freedom. We tell stories about autonomous technology and imagine technology as out of human control not because we always literally believe in them. We do so, as Langdon Winner said, because the idea of “autonomous technology is nothing more or less than the idea of human autonomy held up to a different light.”  

And this is where the criticism of AI hype is itself overhyped. As we have seen, there are good reasons to avoid mystifying machines if we don’t want to be taken in by “The Turk” and it’s modern AI analogue. But taken too far, that position risks reducing technology to mere tools that are used instrumentally by humans for human ends. Technology is that. But hardly solely that.

As the creature says to Victor Frankenstein, “You are my creator, but I am your master.” Clearly, we are not always the masters of our own technologies. And the ends that are designed into technology are not always aligned with the diverse ends of the people who use it. Being able to see these protean qualities in technology and the way we interact with it can enlarge our understanding of what it is.

The fact that technologies are not just tools is, notably, not the only message that Frankenstein imparts. This is because the novel, paradoxically, uses hype to call hype into question. Langdon Winner in his book Autonomous Technology, offers an insightful interpretation: Victor Frankenstein only ever sees his relation to the creature in hyperbolic terms. He’s in a fever to create it because he imagines that he’s almost like God, bringing into existence his own Adam. But then, as soon as he brings the creature to life, he runs away from it, repulsed by its grotesque appearance.

In modern lingo, Frankenstein is the deadbeat-dad who is unwilling to nurture or care for his offspring. Metaphorically, Victor can only see technology through hyperbole. It’s either an artifact from heaven, or one from hell. More crucially, Victor thinks the monstrousness is inherent in the creature itself rather than something that emerged as a result of his neglect.

Being able to see these protean qualities in technology and the way we interact with it can enlarge our understanding of what it is.

As Winner notes, in many modern renditions of the Frankenstein tale, all that is portrayed is Victor’s myopic point of view: technology suddenly becomes, of itself, an autonomous horror, killing and rampaging through the countryside. But significantly, Shelly’s novel forwards a subtler message. The real reason why Victor loses control of the creature is that he neglects it. The lesson that is obfuscated in the Hollywood version is clear in the novel: Victor’s interactions with the creature (and by extension our own interactions with technology) would be more benign if after inventing the creature he bothered to stick around to nurture and maintain it and teach it limits. Shelly’s dramatic, some might say hype-filled novel, delivers an important message still relevant in our own day as we grapple with our own fraught interactions with AI. Technology might not be inherently autonomous, but it’s not a simple tool either — it’s only partly under our control. And it is precisely her hype that helps remind us of that fact.

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